geoid

Table of Contents

Introduction
Determination of Earth’s figure
- A historical review
  - Spherical era
    - The ancients
    - The introduction of triangulation
  - Ellipsoidal era
- The concept of the geoid
  - Determining the form of the geoid with Stokes’s formula
  - The contribution of orbiting satellites
  - Radar altimetry of the ocean surface
Earth dimensions—radius, mass, and density

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Eratosthenes' arc measuring method

reference ellipsoid

variation in Earth's gravitational field

Understand the concept of sea level and how it is determined by applying variations in Earth's gravitational field

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Topics

deflection of the vertical reference ellipsoid geodesy spherical Earth hypsometric curve