My geography taught me that earth was an oblate spheroid, ie circular, but
flattened at the poles, like an orange that's been sat on. I strongly doubt
that this would produce a good sphere that would roll reliably in any
plane......but I would stand correcting.
jp
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lou Cook" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 8:36 AM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Kansas really is flatter than a pancake
> I remember reading years ago in a "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" book, that
if
> the earth were shrunk to the size of a cue ball, it would be more
perfectly
> round and smoother than the best cue ball money could buy. Believe it or
> not....
>
> Lou Cook
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 3:30 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: Kansas really is flatter than a pancake
>
>
> Cindee writes:
>
> > Fo anyone who has ever been in Kansas, it is fairly flat, but it does
have
> a
> > few rolling hills.
>
> The point of the study was however that, with proportional scaling, Kansas
> is
> still flatter than the rolling hills, grooves and valleys of a pancacke.
>
> But a lot of things are like that. Look carefully at an orange the next
time
> you get a chance. If you blew the orange up to the size of the Earth, the
> grooves on the orange are deeper proportionately than any of the heights
on
> the
> Earth, even if you were to measure that distance from the deepest seafloor
> to
> the top of the highest mountain. In fact, the grooves are deeper than the
> atmosphere of the Earth is thick. The result is that we spend our entire
> lives
> "conquering the fishes of the sea and the fowl of the air" in only about
> half of
> the thickness of an equivalent orange groove.
>
> You can't let your perception of the world be swayed too much by only what
> you see around you. Twenty years of education will never guarantee that
> you're
> going to be able to get and hold a good job, but it will allow you to be
> amazed
> at things once and a while, and that's certainly worth something.
>
> Wirt Atmar
>
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