Question

Help with this please? :/

Answer 1

The problem of measuring the size of the earth was solved by a Greek scholar named Eratosthenes (er-uh-TAS-theh-neez) who lived in north Africa about 250 BC. The Greeks knew the world was a round ball. They saw ships sail over the edge of the horizon and saw the round shadow the earth cast on the moon. Eratosthenes knew that on the summer solstice (June 21, the longest day of the year) at noon in the Egyptian city of Syene, (modern day as Aswan) the sun would appear at the zenith, directly overhead. The sun rays shone straight down to the bottom of a well. He also knew, that in his hometown of Alexandria, 5,040 stadia (about 450 miles) away, buildings cast shadows. The Greeks measured the angle of a circle as 360 parts or degrees. By observing the length of the shadows he figured out the sun was 7 degrees south of the overhead point in Alexandria. Assuming that Alexandria was due north of Syene he concluded that the distance from Alexandria to Syene must be 1/50 of the total circumference of the Earth. He rounded the result to a final value of 700 stadia per degree, which implies a circumference of 252,000 stadia or about 24,540 miles. Most people back then thought he must be wrong because they thought the world could not be that big. The accepted distance around the earth today is 24,870 miles so he was only off by about 335 miles. After he knew it was 5,040 stadia from Syene to Alexandria and that this was about 1/50 of the distance around the world what would the math problem look like that Eratosthenes used to figure out the total distance around the world?

Answer 2

I think the answer is
5040 stadia X 50