2 long sticks on earth
 

not sure where this goes, but sounded philosophical enough...

so say we have two really really long poles and we and stand them up how we want w/o any problems at all

say we stand one up perfectly perpendicular to the ground. then stood the next one up perfectly perpendicular to the ground, exactly 1 foot apart at the base.

seeing how the earth is round, do you think at some point or another along these 2 long poles that are both perfectly perpendicular to the ground, exactly a foot apart at the base, that they would be further apart?

yes, they would never be 1 foot apart except at the base.

dilbert is, of course, correct. The amount that the poles grew apart would be exponential, but would start at an incredibly small amount. Probably for several dozen feet it'd be barely measurable by your average tool. After a hundred feet or so, it'd be easy. After a couple hundred feet it would be obvious to the naked eye.

I think we're making an assumption that the ground is also "perfect." It would also be entirely possible that the poles would cross each other at one point, depending on the terrain.

assuming that the poles were on a perfect sphere, this is a trigonometry problem.

Um, just how long are these poles?

The distance between straight poles would grow continuously, not exponentially.

And, they would meet at the center of the earth. Plus, they won't be two feet apart until they extend about 3955 miles from the surface (that's the approximate radius of the earth).

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c5...ctor/earth.gif

Like Redlemon said, the sticks will be 2 feet apart once they're a full radius (r) off the earth's surface.

As an asside, is the original poster aware that this 'philosophical' question mathematically translates to "Is the earth round or flat?"

Thanks. That claim was like a thorn in my side.

wow...sorry haven't been back in a while...

i think my original post mentioned it being round...was always just curious whenever i see tall buildings but i guess that even we wouldn't even see it with the tallest buildings unless they were like 3000 feet high or so...

but thanks for the posts

Well, for a real life example, the main towers on long tall suspension bridges (golden gate, etc) are a couple inches farther apart at the tops than the bottoms. I'll google for specific numbers.