Do large bodies of water (oceans) curve perfectly with the curvature of the Earth?
In: Physics
It really depends on how accurate you want to be.
On the basic scale yes. Compare how smooth a billiard ball is, to the Earth, if shrink down to that same size. The Earth is actually smoother than that billiard ball even with mountains and ocean trenches.
But perfectly following the curvature? No. Tires alone mean there are two slight bulges of a few meters on either side of the Earth. But what’s a couple meters compared to a diameter of nearly 13,000,000 meters? Even my. Everest at 9,000 meters barely registers on that scale (only 0.06 %)
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