Saturday, May 25, 2013

On Calculating the Circumference of the Earth


There is an approximate delay of 4 minutes from Atlantic City to Philadelphia--a 60 mile Earth distance--for the sun to set.  So... the Earth rotates at about 15 miles per minute.  And since there are 1440 minutes in a day, I calculate the Earth's circumference to be ~21,600 miles, which is a far more accurate estimation than Eratosthenes.

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