Offline SimonC

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Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« on: October 21, 2022, 10:30:59 PM »
Just watched this very interesting video. However 'experiment' 22 opens up a big question. The experimentor is supposedly at or as near as possible, sea level. Yet when he googles his 'height' he and the object bridge 23 miles away are 860 feet above sea level. Have I missed something here?

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Offline markjo

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Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2022, 10:52:12 PM »
Any chance that you can post a link to that video so that we can see what you're talking about?
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

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Offline AATW

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Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #2 on: October 22, 2022, 10:42:00 AM »
I found the video here.



I mean, firstly he isn’t at sea level.
He’s standing on the base the lighthouse is on and then there’s the tripod.
He’s put 10 feet into the calculator, which doesn’t seem unreasonable but it could certainly be higher. And I note the calculator he uses takes no account for refraction. There’s no attempt to account for that in the experiment.

He’s asserting he can see the whole building but it’s far from clear that’s the case. I’ll have to look later into what building that is, I doubt it’s built entirely from sea level.

And of course he’s made the classic mistake of not understanding what elevation means. Two points at sea level will both have an elevation of 0 means because that’s what elevation is measured from. Finding 2 points at the coast with 0 elevation is not some smoking gun of FE.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline AATW

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Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2022, 09:21:20 AM »
Right. So when he zooms out he pans down and says that the bit he's standing on is "8-10 feet down" to the beach.
From there I reckon it's couple of feet from the top of the beach to the sea
And he says his his tripod is 4 feet.

He claims he's "right on the beach", but he just isn't.
In the curve calculator he puts a height of 10 feet. Why? He's already said he's on a platform 8-10 feet above the top of the beach and that his tripod is 4 feet.
His viewer height has to be at least 14 feet.

He says he's 21 miles from the building. I've had a look and that pretty much checks out.
Using 14 feet as the viewer height and 21 miles you get a hidden amount of 180ft, without refraction.

He says the building is 65m. I wasn't able to check that, but he then claims that's 195ft - the amount he got on his curve calculator when he put a viewer height of 10 feet.
So he concludes you shouldn't be able to see any of the building.

But:
a) His viewer height is not 10 feet and
b) 65m is actually 213ft.

So even with his own curve calculator and with no refraction at all you should be able to see the top of the building.
He says you can "pretty much can see all of it.". I found this photo of the building which is from roughly the same angle as he was looking from.
I've done my best to match the sizes of the image I found and a screengrab from his video and:



There is plenty of the building missing.

TL;DR - he's put the wrong value for viewer height in the calculator, he's miscalculated the height of the building in feet, he's not taken account for refraction at all and he's incorrectly claimed that you can "pretty much see all of it" when that just isn't true.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2022, 09:23:12 AM by AllAroundTheWorld »
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

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Offline AATW

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Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #4 on: October 25, 2022, 10:44:52 AM »
Just watched this very interesting video. However 'experiment' 22 opens up a big question. The experimentor is supposedly at or as near as possible, sea level. Yet when he googles his 'height' he and the object bridge 23 miles away are 860 feet above sea level. Have I missed something here?
The 860 feet thing. He's looked at a walking route from one place to the other.
Google tells him that if you walk that you'll be going up 860ft of hills/slopes and coming back down 860ft.
Which is obvious because you're going from one point at sea level (a beach) to another (a dock). Sea level is what elevation is calculated from.
He thinks that's evidence of the earth being flat, but it isn't. A beach in Australia will have elevation 0 as will a beach in the UK. That doesn't mean that the earth is flat, elevation is simply the height above local sea level, the shape of the earth is not relevant. The fact he doesn't understand this, and the other mistakes he's made which I've highlighted, do not make him credible.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Offline SimonC

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Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #5 on: October 28, 2022, 02:07:52 PM »
Some good points there thank you guys.

Re: Why I'm a Flat Earther... 37 Must-See Experiments
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2023, 10:05:46 PM »
Just watched this very interesting video. However 'experiment' 22 opens up a big question. The experimentor is supposedly at or as near as possible, sea level. Yet when he googles his 'height' he and the object bridge 23 miles away are 860 feet above sea level. Have I missed something here?