• Question: @Connor Why is the world round?

    Asked by Zongo to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Connor Macrae

      Connor Macrae answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      The Earth isn’t actually perfectly round, but this is just the way it formed. The Earth formed from lumps of rock that slowly all clumped together due to gravity. Throughout this, the soon-to-be-Earth was rotating, meaning it formed as an almost sphere and not some other crazy shape. due to the axis of rotation, the Earth actually bulges at the equator, meaning the Earth is more like a slightly squashed squash ball.

    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      @Zongo Connor’s right – it’s a slightly flattened sphere. But even better than that is that it is slightly pear shaped! And it gets more complicated still because it depends on how you define the earth’s surface. If you take the view that the shape of the earth is an equipotential surface – that means that if you place a marble anywhere on it, it won’t roll away – then the earth is a very funny shape indeed with all sorts of lumps and bumps.

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