Measurement of the Earth

Measurement of the Earth

One day Eratosthenes read in a papyrus book that in the southern frontier outpost of Syene, near the first cataract of the Nile, at noon of June 21 vertical sticks cast no shadows. Eratosthenes was really amused and went on reading…

On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, as the hours crept toward midday, the shadows of temple columns grew shorter. At noon, they were gone. A reflection of the Sun could then be seen in the water at the bottom of a deep well. He Sun was directly overhead.

It was an observation that someone else might easily have ignored. Sticks, shadows, reflections in wells, the Sun over the head, what the matter? of what possible importance could such simple everyday observations be?

But Eratosthenes was a scientist, and his musing on these commonplaces changed the world. In a way, they made our world, as Eratosthenes actually had the presence of mind to do an experiment to observe whether in Alexandria vertical sticks cast shadows near noon on June 21. And, he discovered, sticks do cast shadows!

The scientist asked himself how, at the same moment, a stick in Syene could cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria, far to the North, could cast a pronounced shadow? Consider now a map of ancient Egypt with two vertical sticks of equal length, one stuck in Syene and the other in Alexandria.

On this planet Earth the fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. (Mark Twain). Photo : Elena

Suppose that, at a certain moment, each stick casts no shadow at all. This is perfectly easy to understand – provided the Earth is flat and the Sun would then be directly overhead. But if the two sticks cast shadows of equal length that also would make sense on a flat Earth: the Sun’s rays would then be inclined at the same angle to the two sticks. But how could it be that at the same instant there was no shadow at Syene and a substantial shadow at Alexandria?

The only possible answer, he saw, was that the surface of the Earth is curved. Not only that: the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. The Sun is so far away that its rays are parallel when they reach the Earth. Sticks placed at different angles to the Sun’s rays cast shadows of different lengths. For the observed difference in the shadow lengths, the distance between Alexandria and Syene had to be about seven degrees along the surface of the Earth; that is, if you imagine the sticks extending down to the center of the Earth, they would there intersect at an angle of seven degrees. Seven degrees is something like one-fiftieth of three hundred and sixty degrees, the full circumference of the Earth. Eratosthenes knew that the distance between Alexnadria and Syene was approximately 800 kilometers, because he hired a man to pace it out. Eight hundred kilometers 50 is 40,000 kilometers: so that must be the circumference of the Earth.

This is the right answer! Eratosthenes only tools were sticks, eyes, feet and brain, plus a taste for experiment. With them he deduced the circumference of the Earth with an error of only a few percent, a remarkable achievement for 2,200 years ago. He was the first person accurately to measure the size of our planet.

Discovery by Eratosthenes

The discovery that the Earth is a very little world was made, as so many very important human discoveries were, in the ancient Near East, in a time some humans still call the third century B.C. This discovery was made in the greatest metropolis of the age, the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

There lived a man in this city, named Eratosthenes. He was an astronomer, philosopher, poet, theater critic, historian and mathematician. The title of the books he wrote range from Astronomy to On Freedom from Pain.

One of his envious contemporaries called him Beta, the second letter of the Greek alphabet, because, he said, Eratosthenes was second best in the world in anything.

It seems clear that in almost everything Eratosthenes was Alpha. He was also the director of the great library of Alexandria. One day thus he read in a papyrus book that in the southern frontier outpost of Syene, near the first cataract of the Nile, at noon of June 21 vertical sticks cast no shadows. Eratosthenes was really amused and went on reading…

(By Carl Sagan, Cosmos).

The Earth, Illustration by Elena.