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Question: Does anybody actually have a good quality reference point of "This is how I know the earth really is a sphere"? Like, something more direct than indir

Question: Does anybody actually have a good quality reference point of "This is how I know the earth really is a sphere"? Like, something more direct than indirect (I know you'd need a fairly massive conspiracy, but that's indirect). Previous googling and so forth didn't really yield particularly good results for me.

fullshark 5y ago
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/7-diy-experiments-b-o-b-the-earth-is-round https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/7-diy-experiments-b-o-b...
gnopgnip 5y ago
Foucault's Pendulum is a practical proof to show directly the earth is rotating and spherical. There are thousands of these around the world in museums or universities. Or you could create one with some relatively inexpensive materials.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bee_rider 5y ago
Wikipedia has an article about historical computations of Earth's circumference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Histor... They used some pretty low-tech means to do so, which you could probably reproduce if you were so inclined.
rocketflumes 5y ago
This series on YouTube has some fairly easy arguments on the Earth being a sphere w/o using any math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHqBy92iGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHqBy92iGM
dwaltrip 5y ago
The Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. It's always round -- no matter the time of day, etc. -- which is only possible if the earth is a sphere.
- syntheticcdo 5y ago
  This assumes lunar eclipses are caused by the Earth's shadow.
marcosdumay 5y ago
Have you lived in different latitudes? Not only the stars change (what is not very noticeable nowadays), but the Sun goes through entirely different paths on the sky. If you care to observe the stars, moving only a couple hundred km on the north-south direction is enough to see the change with bare eyes.
Thorrez 5y ago
Some ideas here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29974187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29974187

fullshark 5y ago

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/7-diy-experiments-b-o-b-the-earth-is-round https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/7-diy-experiments-b-o-b...

gnopgnip 5y ago

Foucault's Pendulum is a practical proof to show directly the earth is rotating and spherical. There are thousands of these around the world in museums or universities. Or you could create one with some relatively inexpensive materials.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bee_rider 5y ago

Wikipedia has an article about historical computations of Earth's circumference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_circumference#Histor... They used some pretty low-tech means to do so, which you could probably reproduce if you were so inclined.

rocketflumes 5y ago

This series on YouTube has some fairly easy arguments on the Earth being a sphere w/o using any math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHqBy92iGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHqBy92iGM

dwaltrip 5y ago

The Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. It's always round -- no matter the time of day, etc. -- which is only possible if the earth is a sphere.

syntheticcdo 5y ago
This assumes lunar eclipses are caused by the Earth's shadow.

marcosdumay 5y ago

Have you lived in different latitudes? Not only the stars change (what is not very noticeable nowadays), but the Sun goes through entirely different paths on the sky. If you care to observe the stars, moving only a couple hundred km on the north-south direction is enough to see the change with bare eyes.

Thorrez 5y ago

Some ideas here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29974187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29974187