{"id":11924,"date":"2012-06-20T06:36:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T11:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=11924"},"modified":"2012-06-20T06:36:08","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T11:36:08","slug":"im-also-a-drachma-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/11924","title":{"rendered":"I&#039;m Also A Drachma Short"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/thisdayintech\/?p=23307\">June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It\u2019s This Big<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it from the bottom of a deep well, and a sundial cast no shadow. Yet, to the north at Alexandria, a sundial cast a shadow even at the solstice midday, because the sun was not directly overhead there. Therefore, the Earth must be round \u2014 already conventionally believed by the astronomers of his day.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, if one assumed the sun to be sufficiently far away to be casting parallel rays at Syene and Alexandria, it would be possible to figure out the Earth\u2019s circumference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 19, 240 B.C.: The Earth Is Round, and It\u2019s This Big Eratosthenes knew that at noon on the day of the summer solstice, the sun was observed to be directly overhead at Syene (modern-day Aswan): You could see it &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/11924\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,28,35,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-math","category-other-science","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}