Wednesday 30 June 2010

Fun with Gravity

No, I'm not talking about the downtown crane!

This is a map of the earth. It's from the Goce satellite, which maps the actual gravity on the planet. The earth isn't a sphere, but a bumpy potato shaped thing that's thick in some parts, thin in others, and the earth's crust varies between big and not as big depending where you dig.

I have a a new fitness idea? Want to lose a few pounds? Move to the south of India!

Sadly, if you want to lose mass, my fitness plan is not for you.

You can read more about the project here!

2 comments:

Professor Preposterous said...

So a trip to eastern Indonesia, Iceland, or the Azores would be good for my fitness, because I'd weigh slightly more there?

TwoYaks said...

Well, weight defined in the lay sense as total mass would remain the same, but weight as defined as a physicist (or engineer!) would increase. :) So yes! You'd weigh slightly more! I recall the number is some fraction of a percent, but larger than I thought it would be. I spent a bit of my lunch trying to find something to translate those deviations into what relative G people feel in the red and blue areas. :}


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