• Question: do you know how big the world is?

    Asked by beccawilko to Angus, Hannah, Laura, Simon on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Angus Ferraro

      Angus Ferraro answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      A Greek named Eratosthenes worked out the circumference of the Earth way back in the second Century BC. He worked it out by observing the angle the Sun made with the vertical at midday in Alexandria (in Egypt). After a bit of geometry you can get a fairly reasonable answer!

    • Photo: Simon Holyoake

      Simon Holyoake answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      if you don’t want to do the maths, the earth is just over 40000 kilometers in circumference 🙂

    • Photo: Hannah Bentham

      Hannah Bentham answered on 27 Jun 2013:

      The Earth’s average radius is about 6371 km. Assuming it is a sphere, the volume is ~1×10^12 km^3 (1,000,000,000,000 cubic km). Pretty huge!

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