Authors
Meteorological and Hydrological Service of Croatia - DHMZNatasa Strelec Mahovic
Introduction
In geometry a cross section is the intersection of a body in 3-dimensional space with a plane, or of a body in 2-dimensional space with a line, etc. More plainly, when cutting an object into slices one gets many parallel cross sections.A cross section is a common method of depicting the internal arrangement of a 3-dimensional object in two dimensions. In many cases, though, horizontal cross sections alone, don't give enough information about the real nature of the object they depict. Vertical cross-sections can help in this cases by giving another view into the object.
Have a look at the images in the slideshow below. All the images are, in fact, horizontal cross-sections of a certain object. Looking at this horizontal cross-sections only, one would hardly get the impression about the object they have been cut from. Could you guess what it is?
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Probably not! But look now at the vertical cross-section of the same object, cut, off course, in the right place:
This kind of cross section gives a much better idea about the object we're looking at. It is now much easier to decide what the object really is. Take a look!
In meteorology vertical cross-sections are used because of the exact same property: they give
additional information compared to the information gained from the analysis on horizontal levels.