Measuring the Radius of the Earth from a Mountain Top Overlooking the Ocean

• Autores: Dhevan Gangadharan
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 47, Nº. 8, 2009, págs. 533-535
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A clear view of the ocean may be used to measure the radius of the Earth. To an observer looking out at the ocean, the horizon will always form some angle theta with the local horizontal plane. As the observer's elevation h increases, so does the angle theta (see Fig. 1). From measurements of the elevation h and the angle theta, the radius R of the Earth may be found. This paper describes an experiment in which measurements were taken at an elevation of approximately 485 m in the Santa Monica hills of Los Angeles, CA. The average refraction-corrected value for the radius of the (assumed spherical) Earth was found to be 6100 ± 420 km. The accepted value at the equator is 6380 km