Very often we willy-nilly think about seemingly strange and meaningless questions. We are very often interested in the numerical values of some parameters, as well as their comparison with other, but known to us quantities. Very often, such questions come to the mind of children, and parents have to answer them.
What is the volume of the Earth? It can be difficult to answer the question, because the brain is very reluctant to remember those quantities that it rarely needs to apply in life. If you heard the answer to this question a long time ago, today you are unlikely to remember it, since it has not been useful to you since that time.
Before giving an exact answer and comparing the volume of the Earth with the quantities we know, let's plunge into the history of geometry. After all, this science was originally created to measure the various characteristics of our planet.
History
Geometry originated in ancient Egypt. People very often needed (as now) to find the distances between cities, measure certain objects, measure the area of \u200b\u200bland,that belonged to them. Thanks to all this, a special science appeared - geometry (from the words "geo" - the Earth, and "metros" - to measure). And initially it was reduced only to applied application. But some measurements required more complex calculations. Then, at the dawn of the development of this science, such philosophers and scientists as Pythagoras and Euclid appeared.
When building even at first glance simple structures, it is necessary to be able to measure how much material will be used for construction, calculate the distances between points and the angles between straight planes. You also need to know the properties of the simplest geometric shapes. Thus, the Egyptian pyramids, built in the 2nd-3rd century BC. e., amaze with the accuracy of their spatial relationships, proving that their builders knew many geometric positions and had a large base for accurate mathematical calculations.
Then, with the development of geometry, it lost its original purpose and expanded its scope. Today it is impossible to imagine any production without calculations using geometric methods.
In the next section, we will talk about methods for measuring certain geometric characteristics for different bodies.
Body measurement
For rectangular bodies, volume and area measurements are the simplest. You just need to know the width, length and height of the figure in order to find out everything you need about it. The volume of a rectangular body is the product of three spatial quantities. The area of such a figure istwice the sum of the pairwise products of the sides. If we represent these formulas mathematically, then the following equality will be true for the volume: V=abc, and for the area: S=2(ab+bc+ac).
But for a ball, for example, these formulas are very inconvenient. To calculate the diameter of the ball (and from it the radius), it is required to enclose it in a cube, with which it would be in contact at six points. The length (width or height) of this cube will be the diameter of the ball. But it is much easier to immediately find out the volume of the ball by dipping it into a vessel filled to the brim. By measuring the poured volume of water, we can find out the volume of the ball. And since the formula for the volume of the ball is V=4/3πR3, from it we can find the radius, which will help to find further characteristics of the body.
There is another interesting way to measure the volume of a ball, which we will cover in the next section.
How to measure the volume of the Earth?
And if the body is too big, like a planet, how to accurately measure its volume and surface area? We have to resort to more interesting and sophisticated methods.
Let's start from afar. As you know, if you imagine a ball in two-dimensional space, you get a circle. Suppose that from some point two rays fall on the ball to two different places not far from each other. If you look closely, you will see that they fall to the surface at different angles. By simple geometric constructions, you can see that from the center of the ball you can draw lines connecting these two points. Between themselves, these lines will form a certain angle, which will correspond topre-measured distance between these points. Thus, we know the length of the arc corresponding to any angle. Since there are only 360 degrees in a circle, we can easily find the circumference of a circle. And from the circle circumference formula we find the radius, from which the volume is calculated using the well-known formula.
This is the way to find the volume of large bodies, including celestial ones. Even in ancient times, the Greeks used it to find out more data about the Earth. So they calculated the volume of the Earth. Although, of course, these data are approximate, because there are a lot of errors that are not taken into account with this method of measurement.
Before answering the main question, let's look at how such complex quantities are measured today with the smallest possible error.
Modern measurement methods
Today we have a lot of advanced technologies that allow us to refine the calculations of ancient scientists about various characteristics of the Earth. For this, in the last century, mankind used orbiting satellites. They can measure the circumference of our planet with the greatest accuracy, and based on these data, calculate the radius, knowing which, as we have already found out, it is easy to find the volume of the Earth.
It's time to find out the exact figure and compare it with the values we know.
What is the volume of the Earth?
So we've come to the main point of this article. The volume of the Earth is 1,083,210,000,000 km3. Is it a lot? It depends on what you compare it to. From thoseobjects that we are able to compare with this value, only another celestial body is suitable. Thus, we can say that the volume of the Moon is only two percent of the Earth's.
There are also planets, such as Jupiter, which have a huge volume due to the fact that they have a small density and a large surface area. The volume of the Earth could also be larger if it consisted mainly of gases, and not of solid and liquid substances.
Application
We need such values rather for interest. But in real life they are used very actively. In astronomy, such quantities as the volume of the Earth, the mass of the Earth, the Earth's radius are used to calculate the orbit of satellites launched from the surface of our planet. Also, these data can be useful for more basic research. It is interesting to use these data in geography and geology, because the calculation of the volume of the Earth is of interest for geological exploration and an approximate assessment of mineral deposits.
Errors
As you know, everywhere there are errors. And in the calculation of the volume of the Earth there are quite a lot of them. More precisely, only one error contributes to the measurements, but it is the most significant. This is because the earth is not perfectly round. It is flattened at the poles and also has surface irregularities in the form of depressions and mountains. Although the planet is covered by an atmosphere, and most of these effects that affect measurements are smoothed out, density measurement is very difficult.
Conclusion
Physic althe characteristics of the Earth have always been a fairly significant topic for everyone. It happens that it is not clear for what reason, but I want to know the answer to the question of how many percent of the planet's area is occupied by the oceans or what is the volume of the Earth. In this article, we tried not only to give an exact answer, but also to tell how and with what help it was calculated.
