I think so Clete. I don't know ALL the details about how to do this accurately but as a novice I don't see why it wouldn't work. I do wonder why two people haven't gotten together to do this already.
They have. It's not super common but it's done from time to time by high school science classes. They aren't attempting to prove the Earth isn't flat, they're trying to measure the circumference of the Earth but the procedure is exactly that same.
I know of laser tests over much greater distances done by several people and recorded and documented and showing no drop, no curvature.
I submit that you know of no such thing. You've seen youtube videos of people you don't know supposedly taking measurements that you cannot see or verify or reproduce.
At least this time it'll have been done by someone you're at least casually familiar with, if only via this forum and, more importantly, I hope to do it in such a way that it will be reproducible with little or no expense. I'm going to use my expensive telescope but not because it requires the use of an expensive scope. Virtually any scope will do. The trick is to make sure that it is set up as perfectly level as possible. That's the part my more expensive set up make a lot easier but you could rent even better equipment for a day for very little money and reproduce my results on any sufficiently large body of water.
So I'm skeptical but I don't want to poo poo your effort to do this.
Honest skepticism is all good and fine. I couldn't even get this much commitment out of Dave. He might very well be a lost cause. But whether he is or not, the point in asking in advance is so that I don't have to do it over and over again. I need skeptical people to think through what I intend to do and tell me where I'm missing a potential source of error or some other issue that will negate the findings in the minds of those who don't want to be convinced of what the whole world already knows.
So, with that in mind, this is what I intend to do....
I'm going to go here...
29°56'12.06"N 95°42'16.24"W
I'm going to make a measurement across the entire body of water. Here's a screen shot from Google Earth with the red line being my line of sight...
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That red line is approximately 1.3 miles long which if the Earth is flat will show no drop at all and if the Earth is as big as NASA says should produce a drop of approximately 13.5 inches.
That's the basics but there's more to it than that....
I'm going to have my scope set up on the northern most end of the red line up on the cement that surrounds the pond. I'll then take some preliminary measurements...
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The first measurements I take will be calibration measurements. I'll take a measurement to two widely spread apart but equidistant points (marked Calibration 1 and Calibration 2 on the screen shot). My camera should be pointed at the exact same spot on the target at both locations. This will demonstrate that my set up is truly flat, level and true. If the scope is even a little bit out of level, it will show up here and I'll have to make adjustments until the error is corrected.
Once I know that the scope is shooting straight, I'll take a measurement to location ZERO 1. This will be my zero mark. This point is plenty close enough to the scope that any curvature of the Earth between the scope and that location is totally negligible. We're talking less than a 16th of an inch. I hope to use location Zero 1 because it is the closest point that is easy to mark off on the map but my scope has a rather long focal length and so I don't know for sure that Zero 1 is far enough away to focus on with my scope. If it is, I'll use it, if not, I will use location Zero 2 which I'm certain will work just fine.
After that, it's just a matter of taking a measurement all the way at the other end of the pond and comparing the two to see if there is any difference.
If there is an appreciable difference, your thesis (i.e. the Earth is flat) is falsified.
If the difference happens to be 13.5 inches (or there abouts) you'll owe Eratosthenes an apology!
Now, the major variable here is the waves on the water. The camera that I'll have attached to the scope has very detailed visual indicators for the dead center of the image, as does the computer software that I'll be controlling the camera with. I intend to simply float a target on the surface and adjust the height until a specific point on the target it is centered in my field of view and then measure how tall the target is. The waves, obviously, will introduce a lot of potential error. I intend to overcome this in three ways. First, I'll wait until I have a day when there is very little or no wind (rather common in Houston). Second, the primary target location is in a perfect little "harbor" that unless the wind is coming from the northwest, should remain quite calm. Third, I'll do the measurements at both locations several times (probably 5 or maybe 10 times) and take the average.
I hope to be able to film this whole process but I'm not too confident that I'll be able to. I'll have to have some help to do this and I haven't even found that yet so I make no promises on being able to produce my own YouTube video but I really want to so I do promise to try. If I pull that off, the quality is going to suck so bad that it'll be comical. It'll hearken back to the days when YouTube was new and no one was producing professional quality anything to put on there. If, however, that effort fails completely, you'll have to settle for simple still photos and screen shots.
Does anyone have any suggestions to improve on what I just proposed? Is there something I've missed or anything at all that I could do that would be better? Are there any questions or anything that I need to clarify?
Remember, I aint gonna do this but once (assuming I get to do it at all) so you need to tell me now if you want me to do something differently.
Clete
P.S. Just in case someone wanted to know how I expected to get the target consistently lined up in the center of the camera view, here's a pic that I took with my iPhone through the eye piece on my camera. And that will only get me close. The software I'll be using to control the camera has an even more precise center reticle that will allow me to get the center of the target lined up within +/- 1 pixel. It's so precise that the wave action is going to drive me nuts.
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