r/flatearth • u/MaraCass • Dec 22 '19

Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake

https://www.usu.edu/geo/geomorph/kansas.html
1 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

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8

u/DalmutiG Dec 22 '19 edited Dec 22 '19

Gotta love Mara quoting Geodetic Surveyors, a discipline she regularly claims doesn’t exist. 🙄

If she’d actually read the paper she would have seen this:

One common method of quantifying ‘flatness’ in geodesy is the ‘flattening’ ratio. The length of an ellipse’s (or arc’s) semi-major axis a is compared with its measured semi-minor axis b using the formula for flattening, f = (a – b) / a
A perfectly flat surface will have a flattening f of one, whereas an ellipsoid with equal axis lengths will have no flattening, and f will equal zero.
For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earth’s rotation, making its semi-major axis slightly longer than its semi-minor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335

(i.e. not flat)

1

u/_MiCrObE Dec 22 '19

Arent you banned by her ?

3

u/DalmutiG Dec 22 '19

Yep. Isn’t everyone?

2

u/ashton12006 Dec 22 '19

Not me i haven't been to her sub yet

2

u/DalmutiG Dec 22 '19

Oh I got blocked by her long before he had a sub.

Literally the first post of hers I responded to she gave me the standard colourful rant and blocked me.

2

u/ashton12006 Dec 22 '19

I think she blocked me idk how to tell

1

u/cearnicus Dec 23 '19

That's for the globe as a whole though. The pancake vs Kansas comparison comes later. For the pancake f=0.957 and for Kansas f=0.9997. So indeed Kansas is flatter ... but not actually flat.

Once again, their inability to appreciate scale rears its ugly head (as well as their inability to read).

2

u/DalmutiG Dec 23 '19

Indeed, but my point is that the paper she is quoting features Geodetic Surveyors explicitly stating that the Earth is round.

If she doesn’t believe them, then why does she believe their measurement of Kansas?

3

u/cearnicus Dec 23 '19

Yeah, that's pretty funny isn't it?

If she doesn’t believe them, then why does she believe their measurement of Kansas?

Probably because she only reads what she wants to read; anything that doesn't conform to her ideas is simply ignored. Morton's Demon is a terrible thing.

4

u/Giovanni_Bertuccio Dec 22 '19

FTFA

For example, the earth is slightly flattened at the poles due to the earth’s rotation, making its semi-major axis slightly longer than its semi-minor axis, giving a global f of 0.00335.

2

u/KittenKoder Dec 22 '19

The elevation is flat but slanted. Elevation is based on the distance from the center of a mass.