Professional Idiots

[pleaserecycle]

Diablos1979 said:

pleaserecycle said:

I think there's an underlying issue in which, as children, we're taught so many ideas without explanations.  Most of us will probably never think about the earth being round again because it doesn't directly impact our daily routine.  But we might encounter someone with an interesting question: if the earth is round, then why are railroad tracks straight?  We may not know the answer and we may not know how to find it.  At this point we don't have any explanation for why the earth is round, but we have a reason, which actually seems very intuitive, negating it.

Yes we do, it's called gravity :)

I should have phrased my bolded text as, "At this point we don't have any evidence showing that the earth is round...".  My point being that I can understand how someone believes the earth is flat because we mostly experience a "flat" earth.  It seems especially plausible when we start thinking about why cross-country railroad pieces are flat.  Could flat railroad pieces exist in a round world?  I don't think the solution is very intuitive, but we can demonstrate it by zooming into the edge of a circle and prove it using mathematics.  Even so, we haven't debunked a flat or round earth; we have only shown that flat railroad pieces can exist in both.