2 – MEASURING THE EARTH WITH A ROD

Eratosthenes: Measuring the Impossible

Some 1,700 years before the famous expedition of Magellan and Elcano, which took more than
three years to circumnavigate the Earth to verify that it is not flat, but round, the Greek polymath
Eratosthenes managed to make that same finding and also estimate its diameter with a straight-forward
piece of mathematical reasoning, without leaving the city of Alexandria and with surprising accuracy.
The power of the mathematics developed by the classical Greeks was the key to performing this
remarkable feat and managing to measure the impossible.

Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene, a city located in modern-day Libya, around 276 B.C. and in the
year 236 B.C. became Chief Librarian of the prestigious Library of Alexandria. He made contributions in
fields as apparently disparate as poetry, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, history and geography,
among others. As a mathematician, he is well known for the so-called Sieve of Eratosthenes, which
makes it possible to isolate and determine all prime numbers up to a given natural number and which is
still used today.

In addition, he knew how to apply basic mathematical knowledge, such as the calculation of the
length of an arc of circumference—which is now studied in secondary school—in order to approximate
the radius of the Earth very precisely, using only rudimentary instruments. In particular, Eratosthenes
observed the shadow produced by the rays of the Sun during the summer solstice in two places far
enough away from each other: Siena (now the Egyptian city of Aswan) and Alexandria, located north of
Siena following the same meridian.

In the solar noon of that day, in a deep well of Siena, one could see for a very brief instant the
reflection of the water it contained, which showed that the rays of the sun fell perpendicularly. This is
true at the time of the summer solstice and on the Tropic of Cance (Eratosthenes placed Siena on that
terrestrial parallel) However, at that same moment, in Alexandria (located about 7 degrees farther
north) the rays fell at a slightly transversal angle, since obelisks or a simple cane stuck in the ground cast
a small but perceptible shadow. This is already in itself a simple proof that the Earth cannot be flat,
because if it were so, at that same moment in Alexandria the solar rays should also have fallen
perpendicularly and not provided any shade.
 Eratosthenes was born in Cyrene, a city located in modern-day Libya, around 276 B.C. and in the
year 236 B.C. became Chief Librarian of the prestigious Library of Alexandria. He made contributions in
fields as apparently disparate as poetry, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, history and geography,
among others. As a mathematician, he is well known for the so-called Sieve of Eratosthenes, which
makes it possible to isolate and determine all prime numbers up to a given natural number and which is
still used today.

A SIMPLE RULE OF THREE

Eratosthenes started from a model of a round Earth in the shape of a sphere, so he knew that
the curvature of the Earth would cause this effect. He devised a method to calculate the diameter of the
sphere from only two data points: the angle of incidence of the sun in Alexandria on the summer solstice
(which is the same as the section of the circumference defined by the two cities) and the distance
between them. In this way, with a simple rule of three he could calculate the length of the
circumference of the Earth. If the angle of incidence gives rise to a length of an arc of circumference
equal to the distance between Alexandria and Siena, then the total length will correspond to 360
degrees (the full circumference).

https://youtu.be/Mw30CgaXiQw (How Eratosthenes calculate the Earth video)

To calculate the angle of incidence of the sun’s rays in Alexandria on the summer solstice he had
to use trigonometry concepts, which were already known to Greek mathematicians, although using
methods very different from those used today. In current terminology, that angle of incidence is the
value of the arctangent of the division between the shadow of an object and its height (see Figure 2).
Eratosthenes obtained a value close to 7.2 degrees, or 1/50th the circumference of a circle.

To finish his calculation he needed a sufficiently accurate estimate of the distance between the
two cities. Legend has it that Eratosthenes knew that a camel took fifty days to get from one city to
another, traveling about a hundred stadia per day, so he estimated the distance at about five thousand
stadia. The precision of his calculation is unknown, since the stadium is not a unit of measurement with
a clear value. But if we consider as a measure of a stadium the one corresponding to the Egyptian
stadium (157.5 metres), we would obtain an approximate distance of 787.5 km. Substituting these
values in the rule of three above, we obtain a circumference length of 39,375 km. This is an excellent
approximation of the actual value, which is about 40,075 km at the equator.