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Eratosthenes Experiment

References:
O'Connor, J.J and Robertson E.F. (1999, January). Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Retrieved from http://www-history.mcs.stand.ac.uk/Biographies/Eratosthenes.html Rubin, J.T. (2011, January). Eratosthenes: the measurement of the earths circumference. Retrieved from http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/eratosthenes.html Eratosthenes. (2007, February). Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Eratosthenes

How did Eratosthenes measure the circumference of the earth? How accurate was he compared to modern day measurement? Measurement of the Earth
Eratosthenes is credited by Cleomedes in On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies with having calculated the Earth's circumference around 240 B.C.E., using trigonometry and knowledge of the angle of elevation of the Sun at noon in Alexandria and Syene (now Aswan, Egypt). Eratosthenes heard of a deep well at Syene (near the Tropic of Cancer and modern Aswan) where sunlight only struck the bottom of the well on the summer solstice, and determined that he could discover the circumference of the earth. (Greek scholars knew that the earth was a a sphere). He knew that on the summer solstice at local noon in the town of Syene on the Tropic of Cancer, the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. He then measured the angle of the shadow in Alexandria on the solstice and found it to be 712' south. Assuming that the suns rays were parallel, Eratosthenes knew from geometry that that the measured angle equaled the measurement of the angle formed at the earths center by two lines passing through Alexandria and Syene. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 7.2/360 of the total circumference of the Earth. The distance between the cities was known from camel caravans to be about 5000 stadia, approximately 800 km. Eratosthenes established a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000stadia.

The exact size of the stadion he used is no longer known (the common Attic stadion was about 185 m), but it is generally believed that the circumference calculated by Eratosthenes corresponds to 39,690 kilometers. The estimate is over 99 percent of the actual distance of 40,008 km. Although Eratosthenes' method was well founded, the accuracy of his calculation was inherently limited. The accuracy of Eratosthenes' measurement would have been reduced by the fact that Syene is not precisely on the Tropic of Cancer, is not directly south of Alexandria, and that the Sun appears as a disk located at a finite distance from the Earth instead of as a point source of light at an infinite distance. There are other possible sources of experimental error; in antiquity, angles could only be measured to within about a quarter of a degree, and overland distance measurements were even less reliable. The accuracy of the result of Eratosthenes' calculation is surprising.

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