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Earth Sandwich

yourhotneighbor writes "If you haven't seen Ze Frank's hilarious videoblog, it's worth checking out. A few weeks ago he challenged visitors to create an "Earth Sandwich" where two pieces of bread are placed exactly opposite each other on the globe. Google mashups showing what's on the opposite side of the Earth and a live GeoRSS-based bread gallery were provided. A piece on NPR this Saturday details the concept and a team from New Zealand and Spain completed the challenge. Then on Friday he allowed his show to be written by his viewers who battled out 2,000+ script revisions in a Wiki. Sunday's New York Times describes the results."

3 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. interesting results.... by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    The interesting part of the experiment was that the slices always fell the earth-side down...

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  2. Re:Mashup by mpathetiq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mashup some potatoes for me, please.

  3. Re:Oh boy... by modeless · · Score: 5, Informative

    It uses longitude and latitude, which assume the Earth is a sphere.

    Not true: there are actually several types of latitude and longitude. The most common type (used by most maps) is Geodetic latitude and longitude, which does take into account the oblate shape of the Earth. What you are talking about would be geocentric latitude and longitude; in reality pretty much everybody prefers and uses geodetic.

    There are a lot of interesting problems in the area of defining coordinate systems for maps and navigation. Reading about WGS84 would be a good place to start learning more.