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From an ordinary human perspective, the size of the Earth is an abstract concept. We see many photos and drawings of our planet, but it is still limited to several hundred kilometres. Today we will realize how big the Earth is. What’s more, it was measured quite accurately by Eratosthenes of Cyrene in antiquity!

Meridians and parallels

The earth has the shape of a rotational ellipsoid, i.e. flattened, as a result of rotational motion, on the poles of the sphere. It must be remembered that the planet’s surface itself is not perfectly even, so if you measure very accurately along the ground line it would turn out that each meridian has a different length.

The equatorial radius of the Earth is 6,378.14 km and the polar radius 6,356.75 km. It’s easy to count flattening of our planet is 21.39 km times two hemispheres, which is very little. The average radius is 6,371.0 km. Probably doesn’t tell you anything. For comparison, several similar distances:

• The Yangtze River is 6,300 km long.
• There are 670 km from Zakopane to Gdańsk, which means that you would have to ride this route 9.5 times
• There are 6,348 km from Lisbon in Portugal to Chelyabinsk on the border between Russia and Kazakhstan
• From New York to Warsaw, the plane is 3,260 km, i.e. the route back and forth is slightly longer than the radius.
• A school double bench has a width of 130 cm. To obtain the radius, 4.9 million benches would need to be placed side by side for 9.8 million students, i.e. as many as Sweden’s inhabitants have.

A little bit of mathematics and we’re also equatorial circumference – 40 075 km; and the perimeter along the meridians – 40,007.4 km. These are also abstract numbers for us, so for comparison:

• Man has a shoulder width of about 1.5 m. It takes 26.6 million people to embrace Earth, that is, as many as Yemen has.
• The Trans-Siberian Railway has a length of 9,288.8 km. You would have to ride it back and forth more than twice to imagine how much the equator has. Such a trip would take about a month.

Other dimensions of the Earth

Less often, but it happens that we are asked about other dimensions. Here is a brief summary and also examples to better illustrate the vastness of the planet.

Area: 510.07 million km2

• Poland has less than 313,000 km2. It would fit 1630 times on Earth.
• The United States has just under 9.4 million km2. If they were placed 54 times they would cover the entire planet.

Volume: 1.083 to 10 power of 12 km3
Weight: 5.975 to 10 power of 24 kg
Average density: 5.52 g / cm3

• germanium has 5.3 g / cm3
  arsenic 5.7 g / cm3
  concrete 2.2 g / cm3 and gypsum 2.3 g / cm3, i.e. less than half
  steel 7.8 g / cm3

This post is also available in: polski