: How the highest mountain and lowest valley would be X metres apart is used when explaining how round something is.
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I think you’re talking about imperfections on a spherical object, right?
Every spherical object has some imperfections, some bits are higher than they should be to be a perfectly round, and some are lower. To put these imperfections into perspective for an everyday person, the earth comparison is sometimes used.
They scale up the object in question and pretend it’s earth-sized, then compare the imperfections to earthly features such as mountains and valleys. So a dip that’s 1mm too low on a ball bearing could be compared to a valley that’s 1000m deep if the bearing were earth sized. (You’d have to work out how much bigger the earth is compared to the object and scale the imperfection size accordingly)
Side-note: Earth isn’t actually a proper sphere and is actually a bit squished along the horizontal axis, but they ignore that fact for this comparison as most people don’t know that.
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