Talk:Figure of the Earth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics.	Physics Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale. [FAQ]
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating within physics.
Help with this template Please rate this article, and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.

This text is taken from chapter 1 of the public domain resource Geodesy for the Layman at http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/Geodesy4Layman/TR80003A.HTM#ZZ0 -- please Wikify as necessary.

I've been reading Gordon Lauf's Geodesy and Map Projections and some of the information is different. e.g. he has Krassowsky with a major semi axis of 6,378,295 rather than the 6,378,245m quoted here, and a reciprocal flattening of 298.4 rather than the 298.3 quoted here.

Also an issue which particularly concerns me is Lauf's suggestion that in general "the geodesic has an infinite number of windings on the spherical earth", oscillating between a given latitude north and south. WHilst this may be true "in general", I would infer that there are particular examples where this is not the case and relatively short periodicitites of return can be found. Harry Potter.

[edit] article name

Since figure of the earth is an expression, shouldn't the name if this article be Figure of the earth? Kingturtle 03:12, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I believe the 245.0, 298.3 values to be the correct ones. 85.76.129.149 20:27, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] from PNA/Geology

• Figure of the Earth - This has been lifted from a public domain web page [1]. No problem there, but it refers to a number of non-existent diagrams. These could probably be borrowed from the same source, but they are of poor quality. --Heron 17:01, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)