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Comment by mfn | Hacker News Reader

This set of slides goes over how some astronomical measurements were made hundreds of years ago:

http://terrytao.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/cosmic-distance-...

I had known about some of this before like the eclipses being evidence of a round earth and how the estimate for the size of earth from the well story. From this book: http://www.amazon.com/Theories-Everything-Illustrated-Histor...

What I found most fascinating about the explanations (I was in pre-calc at school at the time) was the math involved. During my classes (or any math class I've ever been in) they gave us formulas and equations but no meaning or real world context. If they'd told us how we could use the distance and angles to figure out what they'd figured out so long ago I think the math would have been much more interesting and brought home the point of why it is relevant to anything.

And that is exactly why I want to collect all the great experiments of history and give them to kids at the right ages to do - to calculate the size of the earth using pencils and shadows and skyline others kids in different countries for their measurements - it's got to stick in the brain better

I think it's a fantastic idea. The most difficult things for me to learn were always those which I don't know how to apply or those which I don't know where they came from. You can't reason over something that seems like magic.

OK - so can we start something?

https://github.com/lifeisstillgood/importantexperiments4kids

I think I can get support for something like this from STEMAmbassadors of the UK. I shall see.

Comments?

Thank you for sharing. This is one of the gems for which I subconsciously mine every day I come to HN.

Wow, that's absolutely brilliant. Thanks for sharing. It's particularly impressive to see how old (and accurate) some of these measurements are.

i got goosebumps - i mean, the people of old are really intelligent! they used whatever piece of data they can scrunge together to piece the truth out.

I feel like these days, we aren't putting in as much effort in these endeavours as the days of old. I wonder why...

That's easy! Rosy retrospection, positivity effect, there are a few biases going on here.

The "people of old" were just as intelligent as humans today, they just didn't have the same access to technology or stored knowledge (which is why Wikipedia is so revolutionary in some ways). If you look at the statuary from Classical times or the cathedrals of medieval Europe, you come to realize these people were just like us. Some went through life unthinking, others probably had unrealized gifts, and a few were able to show their talents. Also, I'm no anthropologist, but I believe modern humans have existed longer than wrting and the historical record, so I would conjecture that humans up to 10,000 years ago--perhaps all the way back to the Cro-Magnons of 40Kya--were just as intelligent as people today, just they didn't have the means to express it the way we do.

In some ways, the wasted educations and wasted talent of today is apalling. I was in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris recently and realized no one has created anything like it in 800 years.

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