eratosthenesandthemeasurementoftheearth

Eratosthenes and the Measurement of the Earth

Read how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth

In the English class:

Who was Eratosthenes?

Read his biography

In Maths class: You'll need some trigonometry practice.

Here you have some exercises.

In Technology class: Now you are going to build a gnomon or vertical stick with a base to be able to measure the angle of the shadow.

Here you'll find the instructions.

You can download all the documents to do the exercises

EXPERIMENT AT I.E.S. LLANES

Working sheet

to write down the data and how the experiment worked

Photo Gallery

Carl Sagan explains how Eratosthenes discovered that the Earth was not flat. It has been subtitled for you, so click on "Choose language: English"

VIDEO CARL SAGAN

Watch this video as a complement of the video above and everything will be clearer for you. Click on "Choose language" to see the subtitles.

VIDEO: THE WORLD IS ROUND

This power point presentation explains the importance of Alexandria in Eratosthenes's times and how some Greek phisolophers and mathematitians had proposed the idea of a spherical earth before him.

I.E.S Llanes Bilingual Section