Shine a laser beam exactly one foot in altitude over a mile-long lake or canal. At the receiving end the beam should arrive higher than one foot in altitude.
This is evidence that light bends upwards.
Dear Tom Bishop (and Robosteve), maybe you think you’re helping the FET with this, buy you’re not, and here’s why:
1) If the light would really bent as you say, it would make a liar out of Parallax, who stated in his book that, with the help of a good telescope the sunken ship effect is reversed and the whole image restored. If the light would bend, then whatever the zoom one had, it would be impossible to restore the image without getting to a higher point of observation, as it would be also if the Earth would be curved. So you have to decide if you trust Parallax or you choose this weird „bendy light” nonsense.
2) Before making a claim about "bending", a Zetetician should wonder: the light “bends” (upward) relative to what
straight line? I mean, what is the definition of „straight”*? If one sees a long row of trees (or lamp posts), how can one decide if they are in a straight line or not? Well, one would look to see if their edge would “align” while standing at one extreme of the row, such as no tree would have the edge in front or behind the line of vision. And the line of vision is, obviously, a ray of light that is getting to the eye. This is true not only for the vertical, but for whatever oblique direction or even the horizontal.
So, if the line of vision is the straight line, and the distance between such an horizontal line and the surface of the earth would increase (as you mistakenly claim) then it would be not the light “bending upwards” (the line is straight!) but the surface
bending downwards… And those ignorant RErs would be right about the curved shape of the Earth (luckily they aren’t).
In conclusion, I hope the RErs, or other more knowledgeable FErs would soon prove that this nonsense about the “bending light” in the proximity of the Earth is false and whatever formula Robosteve would give here to be shown wrong, as it would obviously be.
* I sure hope that you don’t suggest the surface of the Earth to be the “straight” line here, because that would be a circular definition: “The Earth is flat because the Earth is the standard of straight”… You would make the FET sound illogical and utterly ridiculous. Please stop already.