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The simplest model for the shape of the entire Earth is a sphere. The Earth's radius is the distance from Earth's center to its surface, about 6,371 km (3,959 mi). While "radius" normally is a characteristic of perfect spheres, the Earth deviates from spherical by only a third of a percent, sufficiently close to treat it as a sphere in many ...
In a small triangle on the face of the earth, the sum of the angles is only slightly more than 180 degrees. A sphere with a spherical triangle on it. Spherical geometry or spherics (from Ancient Greek σφαιρικά) is the geometry of the two-dimensional surface of a sphere [a] or the n-dimensional surface of higher dimensional spheres.
Equatorial mounts allow astronomers to point telescopes at the same celestial object for longer times while compensating for Earth's rotation in an easy way. The axis of an equatorial mount is parallel to Earth's surface when observing stars at Earth's equator – but perpendicular to it when observing from one of Earth's poles.
For example, assuming the Earth is a sphere of radius 6371 km, the surface area of the arctic (north of the Arctic Circle, at latitude 66.56° as of August 2016 [7]) is 2π ⋅ 6371 2 | sin 90° − sin 66.56° | = 21.04 million km 2 (8.12 million sq mi), or 0.5 ⋅ | sin 90° − sin 66.56° | = 4.125% of the total surface area of the Earth.
Geodesic polyhedra are constructed by subdividing faces of simpler polyhedra, and then projecting the new vertices onto the surface of a sphere. A geodesic polyhedron has straight edges and flat faces that approximate a sphere, but it can also be made as a spherical polyhedron (a tessellation on a sphere ) with true geodesic curved edges on the ...
A sphere of radius R has constant Gaussian curvature which is equal to 1/R 2. At the same time, a plane has zero Gaussian curvature. As a corollary of Theorema Egregium, a piece of paper cannot be bent onto a sphere without crumpling. Conversely, the surface of a sphere cannot be unfolded onto a flat plane without distorting the distances.
A Morin surface seen from "above" Sphere eversion process as described in [1] Paper sphere eversion and Morin surface Paper Morin surface (sphere eversion halfway) with hexagonal symmetry In differential topology , sphere eversion is a theoretical process of turning a sphere inside out in a three-dimensional space (the word eversion means ...
The sphere has the smallest surface area of all surfaces that enclose a given volume, and it encloses the largest volume among all closed surfaces with a given surface area. [11] The sphere therefore appears in nature: for example, bubbles and small water drops are roughly spherical because the surface tension locally minimizes surface area.