Wednesday night I am watching Jeopardy, minding my own business, when suddenly the answer is "In 240 B.C. Eratosthenes used geometry to accurately calculate the circumference of this". The answer was the Earth. What!?! 2255 years ago someone knew how to calculate the size of the earth using geometry? I never heard that in my geometry class!
I jumped up in the middle of Jeopardy, ran to my computer, and googled this guy. It turns out that he was a pretty fascinating dude. His work was studied for hundreds of years after his death (until his was original paperwork was destroyed by religious fervor against science). Interestingly, his measurement of the earth was much more accurate than those used by Columbus and Magellan 1750 years later.
If you want to read how he did this I suggest you check out this page: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm
I also discovered that he accurately measured the tilt of the earths axis. That story is here: http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/eratosthenes.htm
I jumped up in the middle of Jeopardy, ran to my computer, and googled this guy. It turns out that he was a pretty fascinating dude. His work was studied for hundreds of years after his death (until his was original paperwork was destroyed by religious fervor against science). Interestingly, his measurement of the earth was much more accurate than those used by Columbus and Magellan 1750 years later.
If you want to read how he did this I suggest you check out this page: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200606/history.cfm
I also discovered that he accurately measured the tilt of the earths axis. That story is here: http://www.astro.cornell.edu/academics/courses/astro201/eratosthenes.htm
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