They came up with an average distance of about 5000 stadia, which was the diameter of a ‘regular’ stadium. So Eratosthenes hired a few bematists to pace out the distance. A bematist was a professional surveyor who’d been trained to walk in steps of equal length, and also not to deviate to the left or right – to simply to walk in a straight line. The IDEA OF CENTER OF GRAVITY plays an enormous role in the affairs of men. Luckily, back then, there were people called bematists. The second problem was measuring the distance. No biggie that would introduce a relatively small error. First, Alexandria was not exactly north of Syene, but about 20 degrees off to one side – to the west. A painting depicting Eratosthenes teaching at the Library of Alexandria. If Alexandria was exactly due north of Syene, all Eratosthenes had to do was measure the distance between the two places, multiply that distance by 50 and bingo! He had the circumference of planet Earth. (Back then, scientists were pretty good at basic geometry.) Julius Sumner Miller ( April 14, 1987) was an physicist and television personality. Despite its importance in calculating the energy released from nuclear reactions, scientists only realised. Albert Einstein's famous equation Emc2 dates from his miraculous year of 1905, in which he published four groundbreaking papers. He found that his stick cast a shadow of about 7.2 degrees, roughly one fiftieth of a complete circle of 360 degrees. The prospect of nuclear power should be dubbed 'The Great Distraction.' A look at one historical text has lessons for us all in making technology predictions. So, the following year, on that day, at the same time, he measured the shadow at his location in Alexandria (about 850km away, or a month’s easy walk).
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