Abstract
When viewed from the stern, a ship’s turbulent wake appears as a narrow strip of bubble-whitened water converging toward the horizon. The wake does not reach a sharp point on the horizon but has a finite angular width, indicating that the Earth is not flat, but rather round. A simple analysis of the geometry of the observations shows that the radius of the Earth can be estimated using only simple instruments and observations.
© 2005 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Vivian Issa and Zahir A. Daya
Appl. Opt. 53(19) 4282-4296 (2014)
Xiaodong Zhang, Marlon Lewis, W. Paul Bissett, Bruce Johnson, and Dave Kohler
Appl. Opt. 43(15) 3122-3132 (2004)
Vivian Issa and Zahir A. Daya
Appl. Opt. 57(35) 10125-10134 (2018)