Prove the Earth is round

sickstan said:


This is grossly unfair to castigate a fellow forum person for being unable to communicate coherently. Just because Kumar can't string two thoughts together with logical sense doesn't mean you are permitted to laugh at him!!!!!:rolleyes:

What if I were unable to express topic-congruent ideas in a concise, logical manner? Would you humiliate me too??? ;) ;)
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Sure! Why not?
 
Kumar said:
Ex.No 2; Stand on a flat earth, see you don't fall, now stand on a foot ball, see if you can stand or fall
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Wow, I like your thinking!!! Let's use the same logic to test if the world is flat:

Take a flat board 3 inches square and balance it tenuously on a wobbly surface, see if you stand or fall.

Hmm, I fell off, thus the world can't be flat either.
 
CurtC said:
So are you saying that a sphere isn't round? Must be some New Math definition of "round."
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The earth is actually not a sphere. It is an oblate spheroid.
 
xouper said:
I stand corrected. I should have used the phrase "stubborn people who for some unfathomable reason refuse to accept the standard math proofs that 0.999... = 1." Apparently the correct word for that kind of person is not "idiot". :) Please accept my apology.
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Ya? well try this one with idiots.............

When the sum of all forces ( weight , lift ,thrust, drag ) acting on an airplane equals 0 the airplane is in straight and level flight.
 
I used to work in Mountain View in the San Francisco area. We were on the 12th floor, and on a really clear day, you could see San Francisco, right across the bay, about 40 miles away.

With a small telescope (someone brought one in), you could easily see that the Transamerica building seemed to be coming right out of the water, even though its base was perhaps 10 or 20 feet above sea level. I suppose if you could count the floors, you could calculate the size of the earth.

Amazingly, you could not see any part of the Richmond bridge, which was hidden by the curvature of the water's surface. You could see more distant objects like Mt Tam. or Mt. Diablo.
 
phildonnia said:
Amazingly, you could not see any part of the Richmond bridge, which was hidden by the curvature of the water's surface.
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Dear god, is nothing safe from Uri Geller?

Edit: Oops, I just realised that that might be litigious, of course, I didn't mean Uri Geller, I mean, well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products. :p
 
Phildonnia wrote:
With a small telescope (someone brought one in), you could easily see that the Transamerica building seemed to be coming right out of the water, even though its base was perhaps 10 or 20 feet above sea level. I suppose if you could count the floors, you could calculate the size of the earth.
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Here are some quick calculations. If you were 200 feet above sea level (150 feet for the 12th floor, plus some for the building's base above sea level), your horizon should be about 17.3 miles away. That leaves 22.7 miles remaining, for which the height should be about 345 feet up. Googling, I find that the TA building is about 850 feet, and it's pretty close to sea level, so you should have seen approximately the top two-thirds of it sticking out of the water.

Edited to add: the Richmond bridge is 325 feet tall, so would have barely been under the horizon.
 
TillEulenspiegel: Ya? well try this one with idiots............. When the sum of all forces ( weight , lift ,thrust, drag ) acting on an airplane equals 0 the airplane is in straight and level flight.
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Since those forces also sum to zero for a plane sitting in a hangar, I prefer to say it the other way around - if an airplane is in straight and level flight, then those four forces sum to zero.

We can blame Aristotle for anyone who doesn't accept that one (Aristotle claimed f=mv, and not f=ma). Actually, I don't recall having had problems with anyone not accepting that one. The myth of downwind turns, though, that's a slightly different story. And don't get me started on the Bernoulli/Newton lift thing. :D
 
--If the earth is flat, what's on the other side?

Ooh ooh, I know the answer! The other side is on the other side! After all, where would China go?

Of course the world is flat, you dinks. If it were round , the water would slide off. Ever try to keep water on a round thing?

Jeeze louise. Even a garden variety idiot like myself knows this much...:D
 
Deetee said:


The earth is actually not a sphere. It is an oblate spheroid.
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It's closer to a sphere, however, than any billiard ball. If all mountains were leveled, it would be closer to a sphere than any ball of the bearing kind.
 
epepke said:

It's closer to a sphere, however, than any billiard ball. If all mountains were leveled, it would be closer to a sphere than any ball of the bearing kind.
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But I believe it's a lot less spherical than the Gravity Probe B gyroscopes (then again, those are the best spheres that have ever been designed by people).
 
I am revising my opinion of Kumar. I don't think he is an idiot. Idiots are brighter than that.

:tr:
 
epepke wrote:
It's closer to a sphere, however, than any billiard ball. If all mountains were leveled, it would be closer to a sphere than any ball of the bearing kind.
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I don't think this is right. A long time ago I was involved in a Usenet discussion sorting out the question about the Earth scaled down to billiard ball size. You can read the whole thread here.

The upshot is that the Earth is, in my opinion, slightly rougher than a decent billiard ball, but it's clear that the Earth is more out-of-round than a billiard ball.
 
Back on topic...

I spend a lot of time each year out on the Bonneville Salt flats, where you can alomst see the curve. Someday I'll place a bunch of bright LEDs every 1/2 mile for 2-3 miles then take a photo through a telescope.
I'm always thinking about new ways to prove that the earth is round(ish). My proofs were not for idiots, but for no someone that had never seen to concept and without the use of technology.
one idea:
1)Build a fire on a beach.
2)look at it from across a body of calm water at about 5 miles away.
3)Notice that the fire will disapper if you lower your eye level.
 
Re: Back on topic...

Rocky said:
I spend a lot of time each year out on the Bonneville Salt flats, where you can alomst see the curve. Someday I'll place a bunch of bright LEDs every 1/2 mile for 2-3 miles then take a photo through a telescope.
...
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Who's going to believe that you got all those lights at the same elevation? I think you need something filled with water, which even idiots believe seeks its own level.
 
Re: Re: Back on topic...

phildonnia said:


Who's going to believe that you got all those lights at the same elevation? I think you need something filled with water, which even idiots believe seeks its own level.
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Who says it isn't? In October I drove through a 2 mile long, 2 inch deep puddle (not good for the bottom of my car since it is salt water). (I would actually do it when it's dry.)

a photo form a year ago:
 
xouper said:
Since those forces also sum to zero for a plane sitting in a hangar, I prefer to say it the other way around - if an airplane is in straight and level flight, then those four forces sum to zero.

We can blame Aristotle for anyone who doesn't accept that one (Aristotle claimed f=mv, and not f=ma). Actually, I don't recall having had problems with anyone not accepting that one. The myth of downwind turns, though, that's a slightly different story. And don't get me started on the Bernoulli/Newton lift thing. :D
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O crap I dont wanna pick a fight with a math guy....but,

an airplane ( cessna 150 ) on the ground has an enumeration of forces thus:
thrust =0, drag = 0, lift = 0 weight = ?~ 2500lbs , clearly they are not equal.
 
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