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Cavendish's Beliefs On The Flat Earth Society

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Physics is Wild
A popular belief that has been around for many centuries is the theory that the Earth is not spherical, but rather a flat disk. The Flat Earth Society first formed in 1965 and created a platform with three main beliefs: the Earth is disk-shaped, the Earth is stationary and does not accelerate, and gravity is nonexistent and things simply fall (The Flat Earth Society). The Flat Earth Society’s belief that the Earth is shaped like a disk rather than a sphere is completely incorrect and is disproved with countless pieces of evidence. The topics of universal gravitation and attraction, the laws of rotational motion, and electricity and magnetism verify that the Earth is spherical rather than a disk. The laws of universal gravitation …show more content…

The laws of attraction between objects on Earth disproves the first Flat Earther belief about gravity being nonexistent. The Henry Cavendish experiment verifies the existence of an attractive force and provides scientists with the gravitational constant G, 6.67*〖10〗^(-7) N*m^2/(kg^2 ). In Cavendish’s experiment, two spheres were attached to a hanging horizontal rod while a third sphere was brought near to one of the hanging spheres, causing it to move (Figure 1-1). The string suspending the rod twisted as a result of gravitational attraction between the two spheres and with the use of a beam of light, a mirror, and a scale, Cavendish was able to prove the existence of gravitational attraction and determine the gravitational constant (Harvard). If a gravitational force did not exist, the Cavendish experiment would have failed. The other Flat Earth Society view about gravity is similar to scientists’ current observations of the force, as it …show more content…

However, if the Earth were disk-shaped as the Flat Earthers believe, electricity and large-scale magnetism would cease to exist. Magnets have two poles where the magnetic effect is strongest, one pole of the magnet always pointing North. The Earth’s magnetic field is produced by electric currents in Earth’s outer core, which is formed by molten iron (Figure 3-1). In an experiment by Hans Christian Oersted, a compass needle was placed near a straight section of current carrying wire. When the wire had a force applied to it, the compass needle aligned tangent to a circle around the wire, proving that magnetic fields are produced in the shape of a circle when a current carrying wire is placed at the center, similar to the spherical model of the Earth. A natural phenomena known as the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights confirm the validity of the spherical Earth model and demonstrates how electricity and magnetism affect the Earth. The Aurora Borealis is formed as charged ions move towards the Earth from the sun and enter the atmosphere around the upper and bottom poles. The velocity component in the x-direction relative to the field for each particle forms a circular orbit around the magnetic field lines while the velocity component, which is in the y-direction relative to the magnetic field, carries the particles along field lines toward the poles. As the particles approach the northern pole,

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