How Big is the Earth

A glimpse at the earth’s size and atmosphere.

By Vincent Sapone

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Question?

• Who knows what the tallest mountain in the world is?

The Big Dawg

• The tallest mountain from base to peak is Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

• It is 33,480 ft (10,314 meters) but its base is located on the bottom of the Pacific ocean so its peak only rises 13,796 feet (4,205 meters) above sea level.

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How Big is a Mountain?

• Earth’s Largest Surface Structure and its respective place in the cosmos.

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Mount Everest

• Measuring total elevation above sea level, Mount Everest is Earth’s tallest mountain. It towers 29,035 feet (8850 meters) above sea level.

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Of Mountains and Men

• Earth’s tallest mountain is about 29,035 feet tall.

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Of Mountains and Men

• Earth’s tallest mountain is about 29,035 feet tall.

• That is 29,035*12 = 348,420 inches.

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Of Mountains and Men

• Earth’s tallest mountain is about 29,035 feet tall.

• That is 29,035*12 = 348,420 inches.

• A tall man would be about 6 feet in height. That is 72 inches.

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Of Mountains and Men

• 348,420 / 72 = 4839.2

• Mount Everest is 4,839.2 times taller than a tall human being.

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Tall Students Pyramid

• Thus it would take about 5,000 very tall students standing on one another’s heads to reach the top of Everest.

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Do not attempt this at home!!!

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Of Football and Men

• Thus if Everest was reduced to the size of a football field a man would be just under an inch in length. That’s a little less than half the size of an average grasshopper.

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Respective size of a tall man compared to a single yard.

It’s the sport of Kings

• But a football fields with end zones is 120 yards in length.

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Football FieldWith End ZonesAnd 1 Yard

Drawn to Scale

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Within that One Yard Marker We place this scale:

> > >

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Within that One Yard Marker We place this scale:

A Human is a tiny Dot within the Dot Compared to Everest

> > >

The air above

• As gigantic as a mountain like Everest is to a human observer standing in awe in front of it, it is only about 1/11 of the height of the earth’s atmosphere which extends upwards ca. 60 miles.

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The dimension’s of the Earth’s atmosphere dwarf the size of its largest mountain peak.

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The dimension’s of the Earth’s atmosphere dwarf the size of its largest mountain peak.

Atmospheric Nothing

• If you think the atmosphere is big then the earth is gargantuan.

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Atmospheric Nothing

• If you think the atmosphere is big then the earth is gargantuan.

• Earth has a diameter of about 7,900 miles.

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Atmospheric Nothing

• If you think the atmosphere is big then the earth is gargantuan.

• Earth has a diameter of about 7,900 miles.• That is 132 times the size of the atmosphere.

(7900 / 60)

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Atmospheric Nothing

• If you think the atmosphere is big then the earth is gargantuan.

• Earth has a diameter of about 7,900 miles.• That is 132 times the size of the atmosphere.

(7900 / 60)• And 1,436 times the size of mount Everest.

(7,900 / 5.5)

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Small Scale// Model

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The atmosphere dwarfs Everest but is in turn dwarfed by the Earth which continues on far below this picture

How far do you think it would go?

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It’s the Uber Big

• Only about 15 more slides and the scale would be roughly approximated…..

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Earth

• Earth is usually far larger than most people tend to think it is.

• We are in fact awed by its features and depth.

• Yet the earth is but an atomic pebble…..

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Board Activity

• Our Atmosphere is scaled down to a centimeter.

• Draw the size of the earth on the board.

• It should be 132 centimeters as it is 132 times the size.