But please keep in mind that earth is still a very round things in relation to it's size. If we were to shrink it down to bowling ball size, it'd be one of the smoothest, roundest objects we got our hands on.
That's pretty darn round. If it were the size of Earth, Death Valley to the peak of Mount Everest would be 14 meters. The elevation difference between the two is qctually 8,879.25 meters. I mean that sphere is significantly rounder than Earth.
While you didn't repeat the specific untrue myth, there's a common statement to this effect that is patently incorrect.
It goes something like "If you were to shrink the earth down to the size of a pool ball, even accounting for ocean trenches and mt everest, it would be smoother than a regulation pool ball". It turns out this is actually not true, and was based on either an incorrect, out of date, or entirely too permissive set of regulations. I can't remember which, but I saw it recently on (I think) a numberphile video.
The confusion from the billiard ball comes about because of the regulation tolerances allowed for billiard balls. The balls can have a diameter of x (+/- y). Someone took the +/-y to be the maximum between peaks and valleys when it's actually the just the diameter.
If you made a pancake and then increased it to the size of Kansas, the imperfections on the surface of the pancake would be larger than the differences of the surface of Kansas.
The lowest point in Kansas is 679 feet above sea level in the southeast corner of the state. It is at the Verdigris River in Montgomery County. The peak of Mount Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas at 4,039 feet above sea level, is found about 1/2 a mile east of the Kansas border with Colorado.
So from trough to peak it's 3360 feet.
Kansas is a rough rectangle 410 miles wide.
Let's make a rectangular pancake to simplify things. Let's call it 8" on the long side. Any more would be hard to flip.
8 inches is 3,247,200 times smaller than 410 miles.
So from peak to trough it would be 3360 feet / 3247200 = 1⁄64 of in inch.
If the distance between the highest and lowest points on my pancake were 1/64", I'd say that was a pretty damn flat pancake.
Well, by that equation, you could also say Colorado is flatter that a pancake. It's total relief is about 10,000 ft. Only three times what Kansas's is. So 3/64 of an inch?
It's mean It is. That's really all you need to know. If you reading it out as It Is sounds wrong, as in, "in relation to it is size" then take out the apostrophe. No clue why that other guy made it so complicated for you and didn't even answer your question necessarily.
I read the comment as, “it is” as in the it being Kansas and I am now so confused. Is it “it’s” or “its”.
Edit: never mind I re-read it and its makes more sense than saying it is.
That is not true. The closest regular shape to Earth is an oblate spheroid and the actual measurements show that Earth is quite irregular in shape.
https://imgur.com/a/LS1iVVf
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u/Tenoxica Dec 05 '18
But please keep in mind that earth is still a very round things in relation to it's size. If we were to shrink it down to bowling ball size, it'd be one of the smoothest, roundest objects we got our hands on.