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Asked by rich to Ellen, Elliot, Hazel, Rupesh, Thomas on 13 Jun 2016.
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Thomas Biggans answered on 13 Jun 2016:
The Earth is curved but we struggle to notice it because the earth it is so big compared to the size of us. Imagine you’re at the beach and you’re looking out across the sea. You can see the horizon where the sky meets the sea. The horizon is the point where the earth’s surface has curved away from us so much that we can’t see it anymore.
That horizon is about 3 miles away from you so at that point the sea is about 60 cm below where the sea is at the beach that’s the length of two rulers. Now using trigonometry we can work out that to look at the horizon without moving your eyes you’ve tilted your head a grand total of 0.007 degrees. Considering that when you tilt your head so your chin touches your chest that’s 50 degrees you can appreciate that the curvature of the earth from our perspective is just too small for us to notice that what we’re looking at isn’t flat.
Fun Fact: Pirates used to hide their ships on the horizon so they could see their target but their target couldn’t see them!
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Elliot Jokl answered on 13 Jun 2016:
Just following on from Thomas’ answer, I think it is also hard to appreciate the curvature of the earth when the surface is so bumpy – with hills and valleys and mountains that are all much steeper than the curve of the Earth.
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Rupesh Paudyal answered on 14 Jun 2016:
Yes, what Thomas said.
If you take a football and close one eye and just keep it really close (almost stuck) to your open eye, you’ll think that the football was flat too because you can’t see the outer surface of the football but if you take it away from your eye, you see the whole ball and see it is round. Similarly Earth is round from far away like from the space.
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