this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
1015 points (99.3% liked)

Science Memes

9997 readers
2127 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Sister Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The accuracy he achieved and in that time period with the information available to him is frankly staggering. The degree of his error is slightly complicated by the stadion not being a historically exact figure, but his calculation showed the Earth to be 252,000 stadia in circumference. Accounting for the variability in the exact length of the stadia dependent on what definition was used in the calculation, that gives us in kilometers 39,060km on the lower end and 40,320km on the upper. The actual circumference of the Earth is 40,075km. This gives him an error range of between -2.4% and +0.8%.

He also didn't just use a stick but used extensive geographic charts to calculate the distance between the 2 cities where he measured the shadow. It was a monumental achievement and is shockingly accurate. I also believe this knowledge was lost to time and for quite a long time after we did not have any measurements even close to this accuracy.

Here is a picture visually demonstrating how he performed his calculation.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It's still seriously impressive with that error range?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I never said it wasn't. I was originally writing this as a response to a commenter who said the error was ~15%. My comment initially started with "He was actually significantly more accurate than that."

[–] crispyflagstones 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

15% commenter here. My number came from the source I used, I'm not enough of a Greek history fan to know one way or the other, thanks for clarifying

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Lady Autumn, you have an amazing username. This is great content, thank you so much. My apologies that the comment I replied to looked to me like a top level comment; it still does. I mean no disrespect, and I think we are on the same side?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago