Postcards from a Dog

You think I’m kidding? I’m not.

Wen you stand at the equator you move faster than the folks up north or down south. Think about it:

The earth is round. The lines of latitude run East/West. Each line forms a circle around the earth. At the equator the circle is biggest. As you go further and further North or South, the earth, being a globe shape, gets narrower and narrower. So all the circles get smaller and smaller as we move from the equator to the North or South.

Say you live in Minneapolis, then you are at about 45^o latitude, that is, halfway between the equator and the North pole, so a horizontal circle at that point would be smaller than the circle of latitude at the equator.

Since the earth rotates around its axis once a day, I, standing on my property in Belize, travel 24,000 miles in an easterly direction every day.

You, standing in Minneapolis, will travel 17,000 miles.

Obviously I will need to travel faster to cover a greater distance in 24 hours than you.

So there you have it. I’m will go around the sun faster.

Read a spirit discussion on the math of it all if you want to calculate your exact speed:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.callahans/browse_thread/thread/daf65623a34a3377/205d36295d2b07c9?lnk=raot