Question: why is the earth flat?

Felix Warren answered on 19 Nov 2019:

As the other scientists have shown the earth has been proven to be round in many was, I think Greeks did it first using the sun as a point of reference, watching the shadows move during the day to calculate the circumference of earth.

But flat earth believers do have a number of observations and experiment’s that “show” that earth is flat, most of these are them looking at the world around them and saying ‘well it looks flat!’.

However a interesting example they use is known as the beford experiment where they lined up poles on a flat canal over a long distance and found that they lined up. From this they determined they all go in a straight line and thus must be flat.

This by itself shows the earth to be flat, however it ignores a number of factors such as how light refracts through air. Due to earth’s gravity and how light travels through air it actually bends downward approximately matching earth’s curve.

Experiments like this are a good example of the level of detail and control that scientists must go-to when planning an experiment. the Bedford experiment may look good at a glance but because they missed or chose to ignore light refraction the experiment loses all credibility.