Science Theory Flat Earth

Sarah_1964

Sarah_1964

Resident
FCN Regular
I find it interesting that due to atmospheric refraction you can use a laser theodolyte at sea to prove the Earth is flat, or round or concave like a bowl, depending on weather and sea conditions. Yet sighting of ships at the horizon is commonly cited as proof of only one of those observed effects (a round Earth).

How many other common observational measurements in fact differ due to complex real world effects from what people think they are?
 
SoMeFred said:
Not sure I quite follow the context of your question, you got another example?
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It is popular to 'debunk' various unpopular scientific ideas with facts by citing observations, without realising those observations are often subject to very complex perturbations that mean if you actually do the experiment you do not get the convincing result they think.

Staying wth flat Earth - Carl Sagan did a famous video showing that you could prove the Erath is not flat by showing that shadows fall differently at different geographic locations. But that assumes the Sun is very distant - if it were close, you could explain the observation by that without invoking a rounded Earth. So the simple and convincing demonstration is actually not that clever- more nuanced argument and more subtle measurement is involved.

I suppose I was just interested by the absolute certainty some people have about things that they demonstrably do not understand in the detail.
 
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I didn't say it was important just interesting: I like to observe and think about the world, but I don't ask anyone else to - they can do what they like, or nothing.
 
I almost never think I'm right and I seldom am.

And it is perfectly possible to determine answers to these questions, it just requires a little more complex thought and careful measurement than the overly simplistic ideas in which some believe.
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I'm not sure how performance in tests at school is relevant?
 
I wouldn't know: I did very badly at school: I took adult education classes after I married and followed my ability at math to university later but you wouldn't know it from my school results.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning, it seems to place a lot of emphasis on tests and I think tests - especially school ones - are very poor judges of a person's capabilities, I don't place much faith in them.
 
We each have own reality based off life’s experience.

Some things I know for a fact as I have lived them others I accept as such, because I believe the person that told me.
 
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At school people would ask "how do I know you exist?" as if it was a joke, while I was actually not sure they did :-)
 
Sarah_1964 said:
At school people would ask "how do I know you exist?" as if it was a joke, while I was actually not sure they did :)
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Having written that I now suspect they were perhaps making fun of me for my reaction?

God, I was a serious minded little thing: a real joke-killer
 
You mentioned about the well and that was the first thing I thought of when you posted. Have always been fascinated how Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumstance of the earth to amazingly small percentage with just 200 bc math.

Also brought back great memories of slow nights at prep school when we used get very stoned and watch Carl Sagan videos :confused:

good times
 
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Those surveying calculations are interesting and ancient - a lot of math goes back to antiquity. And they did also know of the perturbations - refraction, reflection - that might alter their model. I sometimes think it would have base enough interesting to be an ancient Greek, though as a woman I would have been excluded from math and I heard the men were all gay.
 
I did land surveying for 20 years, (a still do on rare occasions) certainly an interesting career.

Nice mix of math, law, history and technology, plus working outside. The treasure hunt part was always fun; it’s very rewarding going out & recovering someone’s boundary corner monument that has been lost (all too often overlooked) a 75-100 years. Shame it didn’t pay better, and in the winter it got real shy.

Plus on hot summer days hacking line thru brier patches, I’d daydream about being about being out on the water. As a Captain can’t say the reverse has ever been true;)
 
I love that part - being outdoors, awkward rough terrain, great people who know how to traverse it so it feels like they live there. I'm pretty rubbish at the details but when I am out there I get to say what gets done so that is nice.
 
Sarah_1964 said:
It is popular to 'debunk' various unpopular scientific ideas with facts by citing observations, without realising those observations are often subject to very complex perturbations that mean if you actually do the experiment you do not get the convincing result they think.

Staying wth flat Earth - Carl Sagan did a famous video showing that you could prove the Erath is not flat by showing that shadows fall differently at different geographic locations. But that assumes the Sun is very distant - if it were close, you could explain the observation by that without invoking a rounded Earth. So the simple and convincing demonstration is actually not that clever- more nuanced argument and more subtle measurement is involved.

I suppose I was just interested by the absolute certainty some people have about things that they demonstrably do not understand in the detail.
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I find 8t interesting this thread is even under science theory. #globr
 
When I worked in science labs it always made me think about where you stop with calibration of equipment. Ok so depending on how critical the measurement was the piece of kit was making, usually denoted how often and to what tolerances, the piece of kit needed to be calibrated to. So a piece of kit making a critical measurement like a HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) which have the result for the active ingredient percentage (w/v) in a pharmaceutical product would need calibration by the laboratory every morning before use for the day by running standards made by an external company. Then every 3 months an external engineer would have to calibrate the kit using a piece of kit he has that is calibrated by a national standard laboratory. Now this is where it gets a bit much. The kit the national standard lab uses to calibrate the calibration engineers kit, guess what, needs calibrating monthly by having an engineer from the standards laboratory calibrate his kit. My dilemma always was where do you stop? When the kit doing the calibration becomes the one that can’t be calibrated , what then? What happens. To this piece of kit, is it just taken as gospel that this piece of kit will never need to be calibrated?
 
Randysavage said:
When I worked in science labs it always made me think about where you stop with calibration of equipment. Ok so depending on how critical the measurement was the piece of kit was making, usually denoted how often and to what tolerances, the piece of kit needed to be calibrated to. So a piece of kit making a critical measurement like a HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) which have the result for the active ingredient percentage (w/v) in a pharmaceutical product would need calibration by the laboratory every morning before use for the day by running standards made by an external company. Then every 3 months an external engineer would have to calibrate the kit using a piece of kit he has that is calibrated by a national standard laboratory. Now this is where it gets a bit much. The kit the national standard lab uses to calibrate the calibration engineers kit, guess what, needs calibrating monthly by having an engineer from the standards laboratory calibrate his kit. My dilemma always was where do you stop? When the kit doing the calibration becomes the one that can’t be calibrated , what then? What happens. To this piece of kit, is it just taken as gospel that this piece of kit will never need to be calibrated?
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Equipment can be calibrated based on it's unit definition. For example a second is defined as 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation sent out by a cesium-133 atom at 0K because it so happens that all cesium-133 atoms send out the same frequency radiation at 0K. This means that there is indeed a clock that never needs to be calibrated because it is precise by definition. In a lab where they have equipment to measure this, they could calibrate equipment that keeps track of time without needing someone else's.
 
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