Howtown

Earth is a potato, Ötzi was bald

Added 2024-06-28 15:32:41 +0000 UTC

This week we answer a question from our friend Simone Giertz: "How do we know the circumference of the Earth?"

By coincidence, Joss and Adam live 4,000 km away from each other in almost a perfectly north-south line ... and that allowed us to recreate Eratosthenes' ancient experiment to measure the size of the Earth. He probably used an obelisk, we used Pringles cans. But one big issue complicated our calculations: the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, but a lumpy "potato".

For Howtown Heroes (our $8 tier and up) we've got a 25 minute episode exploring different ways to modify Eratosthenes' experiment to test if the Earth is flat and the errors Columbus made that convinced him he could reach Japan.

In shorts:

Finally, we'll be hosting a live video call for our paid subscribers this Wednesday, July 3 at 8PM ET. We want to learn about what kind of content you'd like to see on Patreon and your hopes for the channel! An invite should arrive via email shortly.

Thanks for your support - we couldn't do this alone!

-Adam (& Joss)