Where are we going to get money to make curved roads? You would have to demolish old ones and then carefully make arcs in the road.
If the advantage of square wheels could save thousands upon thousands of lives annually, then we can conclude that a square wheel is better and safer than a round wheel, despite the impracticalities with changing the surfaces of the roads.
Experiments that disprove a flat earth:
None of those observations you provided was an experiment. Simply the same series of observations that are posted and explained in full on this forum
every single day of the year. I asked for EXPERIMENTS. If you cannot show me a single EXPERIMENT conducted by an impartial scientific observer then it paints a clear picture as to the true shape of the Earth.
I can cite hundreds of experiments throughout the Flat Earth Society's 150 year history that proves the earth as flat.
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But since you insist on your petty observations you found on the internet, I'll repost the answers for you:
Hey lets all go watch Mercury and Venus transit the sun.
Small celestial bodies making periodic transits beneath the sun does not prove the size of those bodies. In fact, the only way astronomers got the figures for the size of the Sun and Venus was by observing the transit from two vastly distant points on earth simultaneously and assuming the earth as a sphere. Through triangulation calculations, astronomers compensate for the assumed curvature of the earth and come up with an estimated figure for the size of the two celestial bodies. It is impossible to figure out the size of a celestial body just by looking it from a telescope alone - it is necessary to measure the angles between the body in the sky and the sea-level of the earth from two far away different points in space and then triangulate with simple trig.
If we rework their equations, assuming the two distant observers sat on a flat plane, the size of the Sun and the "planet" Venus are shrunk significantly. The Flat Earth Society has already given the true sizes of these celestial bodies in its literature.
1) Hull of a ship disappearing before the mast.
Sinking Ship Effect:
Samuel Birley Rowbotham found that the vanishing point of the horizon is slightly below the edge of the horizon due the mean combined height of the waves. Although the waves might reach a maximum of 40 inches in height above the true edge of the horizon, it has a profound effect. This means that as the ship shrinks on the horizon it must also sink into mean height of the combined waves. The smaller the ship gets into the distance, the more the waves at the false edge of the horizon will obscure its hull.
Consult Chapter 14 of Earth Not a Globe.2) Tides correspond with the moon. If the Earth tilts, then why can't we detect this? Because there is no daily tilt.
The Earth cannot tilt on its axis because according to Newton: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction. Whoever wrote that FAQ doesn't know physics.
I explain the real FES stance on tides here:
http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=12567.03) Tom, you have posted a picture explainig season. But there has been no explanation on perpetual day/night in the Poles. Perpetual day concerns me most. The only way this could happen is for the sun to stop revolving over the Earth, which obviously doesn't happen.
When the Sun is in its northern annulus, the perpetual day at the pole is caused because the effects of the sun are closer to the hub of the earth.
4) Accelerations slow at higher altitudes. This has been explained by the gravitational pull of the sun/moon, but if this was true, then accelerations would change as the sun/moon revolved over the Earth.
The Sun and Moon have gravitation through its acceleration, but it is very slight due to the small masses of the Sun and Moon. The person who wrote that FAQ is ignorant of physics.
According to Einstein's Equivalence Principle, what you know as acceleration is really a gravitational field that bends space-time. When you accelerate your hand to swat at a fly on the table, your hand is creating a gravitational field as it accelerates through space, however minuscule. Therefore, different levels of acceleration, in conjunction with different levels of mass, would create different levels of gravitation. The lesser gravitation an airplane measures at different altitudes comes directly from the different levels of gravitation from within the Earth.
For the exact mathematics on Einstein's Principle of Equivalence see this paper on the subject:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/physics/papers/0204/0204044.pdf"However one of the main tenants of general relativity is the Principle of Equivalence: A uniform gravitational field is equivalent to a uniformly accelerating frame of reference. This implies that one can create a uniform gravitational field simply by changing one’s frame of reference from an inertial frame of reference to an accelerating frame, which is a rather difficult idea to accept."
Also, read this recent thread where TheEngineer breaks down the Equivalence Principle:
http://theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=11670.05) There has been no evidense of a Ice Wall. Plus, the FAQ states that thsi Ice Wall is 150 feet tall. If this is true, then why doesn't the atmosphere overflow over the edges? A 40,000 foot high ice wall would probably be seen by someone.
Polar explorer James Clark Ross found a 150 foot Ice Wall which he could not circumnavigate around over a number of months in his southern expeditions.
The atmosphere of the earth is kept in through a different mechanism.
6) Distances would be distorted on a Flat Earth as a person traveled South. East and West distances would be longer than actually predicted. Why isn't this so? A person flying from New Zealand to South America does not take super long to get there.
Along that course is an enormous jet stream flowing located at around 35,000 ft above the surface of the Earth. In the Southern Hemisphere exist both eastward and westward jet streams. By necessity, in relation to the polar front and subtropical jets, easterly jet streams in the Southern Hemisphere propagate at rates even faster than the westward ones. The winds in a jet stream regularly reach speeds of over 400 km/h. Airliners use these jet streams to faster reach a destination.
This variable contributes significantly to the travel time between Argentina and New Zealand. While an airplane may have a rated cruise speed it can provide under its own power, the extreme winds of the jet stream adds enormously to the actual velocity of the plane over the surface of the Earth.
For every moment the plane stays in the jet stream it is being accelerated until it matches the surrounding velocity and momentum of the air around it. From there the plane can use the limits of its power to travel faster than the jet stream. Thus, six hours of travel time between Argentina and New Zealand becomes extremely possible.
In general, the Flat Earth Society has found that winds are strongest just under the tropopause. If two air masses of different temperatures meet, the resulting pressure difference (which causes winds in FET) is highest along the interface.
These facts are a consequence of the thermal wind relation. The balance of forces on an atmospheric parcel in the vertical direction is primarily between the pressure gradient and the force of gravitation by acceleration is a balance referred to as hydrostatic. In the horizontal, the dominant balance outside of the tropics is between the Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient is a balance referred to as geostrophic.
Given both hydrostatic and geostrophic balance, the Flat Earth Society derives the thermal wind relation: the vertical derivative of the horizontal wind is proportional to the horizontal temperature gradient. The sense of the relation is such that temperatures decreasing polewards implies that winds develop a larger eastward component as one moves upwards. Therefore, the strong eastward moving jet streams are in part a simple consequence of the fact that the equator is warmer than the poles.
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Additionally, the vast majority of flights between the two areas don't travel between New Zealand and South America directly, but make a bunch of little hops along the continents, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. Like international shipping, the post office doesn't charter a direct flight just for one parcel of mail. The post office puts it on a flight that makes dozens upon dozens of little hops along the continents of the world, picking up and dropping off mail by the ton, distributing to major regional centers. It is vastly cheaper for the airline company and post office to operate in this fashion.
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One additional thing we must consider:
If you've ever been to a major airport you would know that it seems as if every other flight is delayed. A flight rarely arrives at its estimated time. Most people with experience with air travel, who've been on international flights, can attest to the extreme delays of flight arrivals. If we search for "flight was delayed" on Google we get millions of hits. Reading the direct personal testaments, exclusing mechanical failures and bomb threats, we can see that it's not uncommon for flights to be delayed on the range of hours.
Airports may blame the cause to wind conditions, but it is very possible that the maps themselves are inaccurate, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, since they are based on the supposition of a Round Earth.
Just because lan.com may automatically measure distances on a Round Earth map and estimate that a flight might take 6 hours, it doesn't mean that it will. Observational and personal evidence will be necessary to back any flight time claims between extremities of the Flat Earth. If there were any complaints due to travel time, the customer relations person at Delta would hardly be in a position to redraw a map.
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Therefore, with these discrepancies explained in full, I come to my conclusion. The Earth remains flat.