Science YouTuber’s round Earth experiment a success

On Thursday morning in Stoughton, former science teacher turned YouTuber Kurtis Baute successfully proved what some people have disputed recently: That the Earth is indeed round.

Baute cycled 140 kilometres from Regina to Stoughton along Highway 33 and set up a makeshift sundial made of a metre stick and a wooden base. An identical sundial was set up in Regina by Casey Sakires and Ryan Holota of the Saskatchewan Science Centre.

The shadow of each sundial was measured at exactly 11:11 a.m. and the 3.9-centimetre difference in length allowed Baute to calculate the circumference of the Earth.

“I expected the world to be round and I expected that the calculations would be pretty accurate, but it’s wondrous to actually witness that,” he said. “I saw the world as a sphere, and that was amazing.”

There was one small hiccup while the experiment was being conducted.

“A few minutes away I realized that both of our sundials, while they were in line with each other, they weren’t perfectly in line with the road. I think maybe they were a degree or two off,” he said.

He, Sakires and Holota decided to wait a few minutes, and measured the shadows around 11:11 a.m. instead of the anticipated 10:59 a.m.

“It makes our measurement and calculations a little imprecise, but I’m still super pumped about how it turned out,” said Baute.

Baute will be releasing details of the experiment on his YouTube channel early next week.