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RE: 5 Insane Things Flat Earthers Believe (Besides Just Believing in a Flat Earth)
Not trolling; maybe just stupid. Not sure where you are going with the tide thing either but I would think 600 feet of curvature in 30 miles would be noticeable.
Well, tides are curved, sometimes up to 10 feet in a couple of miles, but you simply cannot see it. The ocean looks flat because the curves are too slight.
We CAN see the curve, all the time. When a building or ship disappears when you are too far away to see it, you JUST witnessed the curvature. Same with when the sun sets. But I'm not sure what you think this expected curvature would LOOK like other than that. Are you expecting to see the actual curve of the OCEAN, the curve of the horizon? Can you clarify what you think you should be seeing?
If you are thinking that you should see the curve of the HORIZON, well, that would simply be unrealistic. You don't see the curvature of the horizon until you are at about 100,000 feet, and then you still need to take a straight edge to it. You can see a horizon calculator here.
http://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=Flat-Earth%3A+Finding+the+curvature+of+the+Earth
Next, if you think you should be seeing, for instance, a building behind the curve at 30 miles, well, the math is not the math that you did. You did the DROP, but not line of sight calculations. So, first of all, to SEE 30 miles, you'd have to be up 100 feet high. And then you need to have a target to measure, and then you do line of sight calculations to see how much should be HIDDEN behind the curve.
So, doing the math here:
https://www.metabunk.org/curve/
Yes, the DROP of the earth is 600 feet, but what is HIDDEN behind the curve of the earth is only 210 feet. If you factor in standard refraction, then it's only around 160 feet. You can take out a telescope and confirm buildings are below the horizon a certain amount at these distances and factoring in height.
But people say, "See, I can see these buildings from 30 miles and they should be behind the curve" but A. They don't do the math right B. They SHOW THEM behind the curve... but they didn't subtract the bottom 200 feet of the skyscrapers that ARE behind the curve C. They often don't have a verified height. So, they'll say, "See, we shouldn't be able to see this" but being up at 10 feet vs 100 feet would make a DRASTIC difference as to whether you should be able to see something or not. So, if there is no HEIGHT listed, and verfied, for instance because a specific landmark or a altimeter is in the shot, then you should always be suspect of the veracity of the claim. If they are unwilling to verify the altitude, it's probably to trick you, or maybe because they believe it and just want to confirm their belief system.
Here's a video that shows how it's actually calculated and some real life examples.
These videos tell a lot of half truths that are often difficult to discern what the reality is without some deep and intensive fact checking and understanding HOW to even fact check. Most people are simply not inclined to spend two hours fact checking each and every video or claim, and it's easy to think they sound reasonable until you do so.
Thank you for taking me seriously; I have to say you are the first person to actually give me an answer to this question.