The ocean in a drop

Here is an image showing what all the water in the world collected into a single sphere would look like. On the right is Earth’s atmosphere, collected into a sphere at sea-level density. Now, some people would choose to accept or refute this based on a guess. Not so Dan Phiffer, who has kindly done all the maths for us:

1) Measure the spheres representing Earth, water and air in the image. Obtain the diameter in pixels of each sphere. Also, identify relevant physical constants.
2)Starting with data independently provided by Andrew Nowicki, calculate the diameters of spheres that would contain Earth’s water and air.
3)Normalize the results from Step 2 into pixels and compare with measurements from Step 1.

To find out whether the images are accurate, or simply ‘tree-hugger shock media’ you’ll have to visit his blog.

1 comment March 11th, 2008