The Earth is a Plane

[ellisante35]

http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/05/architects-engineers-for-flat-earth.html

 

These are some practical examples of how engineers and architects account

for the curvature of the earth - 8 inches per mile.

[sensu]

is a golf ball flat if a bacteria had a point of vue ?

[labmath2]

I think the writer of the article i being intentionally confusing. I assume he is familiar with calculation for slope (taking the derivative at a point). Which means unless you use one very long rail, you end up having such a small slope that its essentially a straight line. The rails are probably connecting at 179.99 degrees, which produces the straight line effect.

[green banana]

Railroad tracks can be bent easily when they are laid down. This accounts for the curvature. Nobody installs a mile long railroad track. They come in much smaller sizes.

[ParaSait]

The earth is a plane, uh, because it, ah... BECAUSE IT FLIES!

[ellisante35]

It takes a real long time to be a civil engineer, an architect, and I am going to put my bets on the experts knowing what they are talking about.

[ellisante35]

I don't think you are taking into account the actual differences in height.  At 50 miles there would be a 33.33 feet difference in height, which they say isn't happening. ((50milesx8inches)/12inches)

[sensu]

the earth is flat, to an engineer the planet is round, to a spaceman and the universe contains tiny rocks and tiny balls of gas to an astronomer

[ellisante35]

Is that a new field called Physical Relativism?

[Mister Mister]

is this just an exercise in logic, or do you really believe this is true?  If it's just a logic exercise, this is a fun one as well!  If you really believe this, how do you account for: the Ancient Greek Eratosthenes' experiment with different shadows at different latitudes the same time of day, film of the round earth rotating from space, and satellite technology which you probably use?

Also, if this is true, what is its utility for the average person?

[ellisante35]

I'm not familiar with Eratosthenes experiment.  Has it been duplicated?  I have seen footage of boats that sit ON the horizon many miles out which goes against the claims that they should be disappearing beyond the horizon.  There are also photographs of Chicago taken from Michigan, which according to the 8inch curvature of the earth, is impossible.  They say that it is actually a mirage when you can see it...which would make it a 2000 foot + high mirage and the photo didn't appear to be a mirage. 

Also, how am I supposed to trust footage from NASA, the same people that gave us the most retarded scam in history called The Moon Landings.  They have admitted that they don't have the technology to go to the moon even today i.e they haven't solved the lunar dust problem.  In reference to satelites, maybe they are drones.  I'm not sure what to think of that assertion.  

Here is one of the things that I think is LAUGHABLE....why are there not more PHOTOS of the earth.  They give us COMPOSITE images that are created in photoshop.  They give us the Apollo photo of the earth back from the 60's...appears to be a perfect sphere....and now Niel Degrasse Tyson says that the earth is actually pear shaped.  I've seen a ridiculous photo of earth from a Japanese mission and a supposed "video" of the rotating earth back from 2008.  But oddly, none of the clouds move as the earth rotates.

 

Footage from amateur balloons sent up to around 100,000 feet shows that the horizons always rises to eye level.  If you were on a ball, you would be leaving the ball as you ascended, thus you would have to look lower and lower to see the horizon as you left the ball.  The redbull skydiver had a fish eye lens if you see that footage. 

 

I would think it would be of some importance to people to try and understand where it is they are actually living.

[green banana]

I'm not familiar with Eratosthenes experiment.  Has it been duplicated? 

 

This is why the Flat Earthers are laughed at. They make outrageous claims and don't even know the most basic science. And yes, it has been repeated over and over again.

[Wuzzums]

There are also photographs of Chicago taken from Michigan, which according to the 8inch curvature of the earth, is impossible.  They say that it is actually a mirage when you can see it...which would make it a 2000 foot + high mirage and the photo didn't appear to be a mirage. 

 

 

 

The atmosphere, because the Earth is a sphere, acts like a massive lens bending the light thus making you see things you would otherwise not be able to see were there no atmosphere. This is the exact definition of a mirage. Each time there's a sunset the Sun geometrically disappears below the horizon long before we see it disappear with our own eyes (or camera lens). Now a 2000+ feet high mirage doesn't seem that implausible, now does it?

 

 

Here is one of the things that I think is LAUGHABLE....why are there not more PHOTOS of the earth. 

 

What is the exact number of photos of Earth you require in order to be convinced the Earth is not flat?

[WasatchMan]

So I am a Civil Engineer, and I can tell you that this article is non-sense.  I actually have a hard time even understanding the point that is trying to be made in respect to civil engineering, it is almost like they don't even understand what this discipline is and how it is able to do what it does.

 

Like in this quote:

 

  All our locomotives are designed to run on what may be regarded as TRUE LEVELS or FLATS.  There are, of course, partial inclines or gradients here and there, but they are always accurately defined and must be carefully traversed.  But anything approaching to eight inches in the mile, increasing as the square of the distance, COULD NOT BE WORKED BY ANY ENGINE THAT WAS EVER YET CONSTRUCTED.

 

 Level means 0% change in elevation over a length.  Elevation is measured from sea level (0 potential energy for water) on a spheroid, not on a flat plane.  Furthermore, 8" a mile is a 0.013% grade, which is in all practical purposes flat as far as engineers are concerned.  Freight trains can run 2-4% max grade with LRT running 6% max grade. I also have no idea what "increasing as the square of the distance" is suppose to mean in reality.  For this to be a problem trains would have to be 100s of miles long - they are not.

 

 

We can only laugh at those of your readers who seriously give us credit for such venturesome exploits, as running trains round spherical curves. Horizontal curves on levels are dangerous enough, vertical curves would be a thousand times worse, and with our rolling stock constructed as at present physically impossible.”

 

Horizontal curves are not flat, unless the design speed is around 5 mph.  They are banked so that the centripetal acceleration created by going around a circle applies a component of downward pressure on the rail so the resultant force caused by the centripetal acceleration doesn't make the train fly off the track.

 

Where ever there is a change in grade, like for example going downhill at 2% grade and changing to going uphill at a 1% grade, the engineer must design a vertical curve (in the shape of a parabola) so that grade differential from one part of the train to other is kept within in a specified tolerance based on whole bunch of factors. such axle spacing, cart length, design speed, etc. The minimum vertical curve lengths are typically 300 feet to a 1000 feet depending on the type of train, grade change, and design speed.   To say that trains cannot drive on a curve with a varying grade of 8" per mile is an outright lie.

 

 

I have projected many miles of railways and many more of canals and the allowance has not even been thought of, much less allowed for.  This allowance for curvature means this - that it is 8” for the first mile of a canal, and increasing at the ratio by the square of the distance in miles; thus a small navigable canal for boats, say 30 miles long, will have, by the above rule an allowance for curvature of 600 feet.  Think of that and then please credit engineers as not being quite such fools.  Nothing of the sort is allowed.  We no more think of allowing 600 feet for a line of 30 miles of railway or canal, than of wasting our time trying to square the circle”

 

I have a hard time trying to understand what point was trying to be made here.  At first I thought the author does not understand how a gravitational field works.  However, thinking more about it I think he is trying to claim that a project 30 miles in length would have a quantity error of 600 feet.  Not only is this wrong because for long projects civil engineers will use a Geodetic surveying projection that do account for the curvature of the earth, 600 feet in quantity in 30 miles is not even that important to a civil engineer running something like rail. Specified quantities tend to allow for around a 5% discrepancy in plan quantity vs. what is actually installed in the field, and 600 feet in 30 miles would only result in a 0.4% discrepancy. Back in the days of major railroad building, a civil engineer being within 0.4% of the field quantity would have been a complete and total success.

 

 

The Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea is a clear proof of the Earth’s and water’s non-convexity.  The canal is 100 miles long and without any locks so the water within is an uninterrupted continuation of the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.  When it was constructed, the Earth’s supposed curvature was not taken into account, it was dug along a horizontal datum line 26 feet below sea-level, passing through several lakes from one sea to the other, with the datum line and the water’s surface running perfectly parallel over the 100 miles.  The average level of the Mediterranean is 6 inches above the Red Sea, while the floodtides in the Red Sea rise 4 feet above the highest and drop 3 feet below the lowest in the Mediterranean, making the half-tide level of the Red Sea, the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, and the 100 miles of water in the canal, all a clear continuation of the same horizontal line!  Were they instead the supposed curved line of globe-Earthers, the water in the center of the canal would be 1666 feet (50² x 8 inches = 1666 feet 8 inches) above the respective Seas on either side!

 

Now this comment makes it obvious that the author does not understand gravity.  The simple explanation for how this works is that gravity is acting downward toward the center of mass of the planet.  They dug the Suez Canal using sea level as their datum.  Sea level is a radial distance from the center of the earth where water has zero potential energy.  Since it is a radial distance from the center of a spherical planet, I am not sure why the author is trying to shove a flat plane across the Suez Canal and say there is a difference in potential energy from the center to the two sides, gravity does not act in a plane, it acts from a radial distance from the center of mass.  Since the radial distance from the center of mass does not change, the potential energy of the surface of the water does not change.

 

 

The London and Northwestern Railway forms a straight line 180 miles long between London and Liverpool.  The railroad’s highest point, midway at Birmingham station, is only 240 feet above sea-level.  If the world were actually a globe, however, curveting 8 inches per mile squared, the 180 mile stretch of rail would form an arc with the center point at Birmingham raising a full 5,400 feet above London and Liverpool.  Adding the station’s actual height (240 feet) to its theoretical inclination (5,400 feet) gives 5,640 feet as the rail’s necessary height on a globe-Earth, more than a thousand feet taller than Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Great Britain!

 

WTF?  Sea level is a radial distance from the center of the earth, when you measure from it YOU ARE TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE CURVATURE.

[MrCapitalism]

http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/05/architects-engineers-for-flat-earth.html

Well played... well played

[PatrickC]

I blame Jeff berwick for popularising this nonesense.

[J-William]

A lot of stuff...

Thanks for the educational post. I feel like I learned something even if the original article is rank nonsense.

 

I wonder about our capacity to forget the basic lessons of the past that are the basis for modern civilization. That would be the real atlas shrugged... People who know how to smelt steel and make things just say "eff you" and go galt... Then people who think the earth is flat and computers grow on trees would have a lot of luck.