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Earth Size

 

The Earth is big, but how big?

 

The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It's polar diameter (pole to pole) is about 12,713km and the equatorial diametre is about 12,756km.  

 

(If you can't see any picture clearly on this website then click on it and it will open up in a new page but larger.)

Globe


My model globe's diameter is about 25cm. Since the globe is a complete sphere, the equatorial diameter and polar diameter are the same.

 
Let's compare the two.....
 
Dimensions
 

The average diameter of the Earth is about 12742km or 1,274,200,000cm about 1.3 billion cm!!

(note this is the volumetric average taking into account the "squashed" sphere shape of the Earth)

 

The diameter of my globe is 25cm.

 

So the ratio between the two is:

1,274,200,000 : 25

 

which simplifies to:

 

50,968,000 : 1

 

So a distance of 1mm on my model globe would be 50,968,000mm on Earth, that is about 51km!  Which would take about 10 hours to walk at a brisk pace with no stops or rest!  10 hours to walk 1mm; the Earth is big!

 

 

Volume

 

The volume of the Earth is about 1,083,210,000,000,000,000,000 m3.

 

That is enough to hold 501 Trillion O2 arenas!!

 

 

I can calculate the volume of my model globe.

 

Volume of a sphere is 4/3 x π x radius3

 

So for my model globe it is:  4/3  x  π  x  0.1253      m3

 

0.00818 m3

 

So the volume ratio between the Earth and my model globe is about

 

1,083,210,000,000,000,000,000 : 0.00818

 

or about

 

132,400,000,000,000,000,000,000 :  1

 

These are big numbers!!!