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Q&A for How to Prove the Earth Is Round
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QuestionHow do we know that the Earth is round?Community AnswerWhen a ship on the ocean is going further away it does not just get smaller and smaller, but instead the level of the ship (relative compared to you) drops, thus proving the Earth round. If the Earth was flat, then the ship would just decrease in size, not drop.
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QuestionIs there anything in the sky that is not actually round?HanCommunity AnswerMany meteoroids and comets aren't round. For example, take a look at comet 67P: it consists of two smaller lobes. Small objects like this often have an irregular shape because they don't have enough gravity to contract into a sphere.
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QuestionWhat is the approximate shape of Earth?HannahCommunity AnswerIt's not a perfect sphere, but rather an oblate spheroid or ellipsoid, which means that the poles are slightly "squished" together and on the equator, there is a slight bulge. This happens because of the Earth's rotation. The centrifugal force pulls the parts with more mass further away from the rotational axis.
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QuestionHow does rotation differ from orbit?Top AnswererRotation refers to an object's spinning about an internal axis. Orbiting refers to an object's movement around an external axis.
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QuestionHow do we know that the Earth is rotating?Top AnswererNowadays we can watch it spin from an outpost such as the Moon. Before we were able to do that, we relied on devices such as the Foucault pendulum. See Wikipedia's article on that.
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QuestionWhat is meant by the Earth's rotation?Top AnswererThat refers to the Earth's spin around its own axis.
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QuestionIf the shape of the Earth is not a perfect sphere, then what could be the best shape that we can give to the Earth's shape?Top AnswererThe Earth can be described as a "squashed" sphere, with an equatorial diameter slightly greater than its polar diameter.
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