8 ms·
If you ever want to be bored out of your mind (at whatever level of detail that occurs for you), just ask someone in this field about the definitions of geoid,
by supernova87a 6y ago
If you ever want to be bored out of your mind (at whatever level of detail that occurs for you), just ask someone in this field about the definitions of geoid, ellipsoid, etc. etc. and you will have hours (well, maybe minutes) of fun.
- globular-toast 6y agoMy PhD supervisor told a funny story about this to illustrate the phenomenon of learning more, but seemingly knowing less. First you learn that the Earth is "round". Then you learn about shapes and that the Earth is actually a sphere. Then you learn more shapes and that the Earth isn't actually a sphere but is slightly squashed at the poles: it's spheroid. Then you learn that it is actually more squashed at the top than at the bottom. It is in fact a geoid. So you look up geoid in the dictionary and find that geoid means "Earth shaped".
- hug 6y agoThis reminded me of The Relativity of Wrong. https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.ht...
- MertsA 6y agoAnd for added fun if you look up some of the reference points maintained by NOAA they'll list a position, a date, and a velocity. Due to the relative movement between different parts of the Earth even "fixed" points will be moving so you need to calculate it based off of the velocity and length of time since the position was surveyed. Geodesy is weird.