Anniversary of Eratosthenes Measuring the Earth

Started by rcallicotte, June 19, 2007, 11:04:59 AM

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rcallicotte

Today's History Channel calendar is very relevant to TG2 fans -

"Eratosthenes, a Greek academic, was the founding father of geography.  He invented the system of latitude and longitude and, on this day [June 19th] in 240 BC, offered up the first measure of the planet Earth.  Modern mathematicians approximate that his calculations reflected a size of 25,000 miles in circumference, only 98 miles more than the modern value of 24,902 miles."
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Will

yea I know, pretty crazy how smart some people are. (I have it on my calender)
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

rcallicotte

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Harvey Birdman

Yeah, 2300 years ago a Greek mathematician calculated the diameter of the earth with less than .4% error.

About 5 (10?) years ago, NASA slammed a probe into Mars, accidentally destroying it because they hadn't (couldn't?) converted distance from metric to English units.

Still think we're getting smarter?

;D

Sethren


Will

Note the word some. Though I wonder if their heads were bigger back then. (Idiocracy plug)

Regards

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.