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Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

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Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#31

Post by ericmay »

lostapathy wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

There are places in Kansas where you can turn 360 degrees and see not a hill, tree, structure, or any landmarks at all (other than the road). You see the curve of the earth. It looks like a golden ocean.

Parts of Iowa and Illinois are much flatter than any parts of Kansas I’ve ever been to. Incredibly so. People romanticize this idea that Kansas is a flat nothing-land, luckily most of them also stay away. Kansas is only the 7th flattest state, even https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/flattest-st...

Living in Ohio I was surprised to see that we are less flat than North Carolina and the tiniest bit flatter than Nebraska. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#32

Post by jlkuester7 »

lostapathy wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

There are places in Kansas where you can turn 360 degrees and see not a hill, tree, structure, or any landmarks at all (other than the road). You see the curve of the earth. It looks like a golden ocean.

Parts of Iowa and Illinois are much flatter than any parts of Kansas I’ve ever been to. Incredibly so. People romanticize this idea that Kansas is a flat nothing-land, luckily most of them also stay away. Kansas is only the 7th flattest state, even https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/flattest-st...

I think the big reason for KS's flat reputation vs places like Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Delaware is trees (or lack thereof). In SW Kansas (the flattest part of the state) you can drive for miles and miles of endless flatness without hardly seeing a single tree. There is just nothing that disrupts your view of the horizon. It is a bit of a different experience then being in a flat forest/swamp.

(Also, the terrain of eastern/central KS is very different from the west. So if your only experience of KS is Wichita/Kansas City/Topeka, then you don't know how truly flat the other half of the state actually is...)

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#33

Post by scythe »

lostapathy wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

There are places in Kansas where you can turn 360 degrees and see not a hill, tree, structure, or any landmarks at all (other than the road). You see the curve of the earth. It looks like a golden ocean.

Parts of Iowa and Illinois are much flatter than any parts of Kansas I’ve ever been to. Incredibly so. People romanticize this idea that Kansas is a flat nothing-land, luckily most of them also stay away. Kansas is only the 7th flattest state, even https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/flattest-st...

It's pretty weird to see Nevada rank so highly. It does have a lot of extremely flat valleys (Nevada is under geological tension, literally stretching out the flat parts) but you'd have a hard time finding part of Nevada without mountains on the horizon. If anything, it shows how difficult it is to define 'overall flatness'. But, as a Floridian, I knew we would win easily regardless of metric.

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#37

Post by teachingassist »

_Microft wrote: post #2

I am only getting a search results page with no results. It was like this hours ago already when the submission was still in the second chance pool. Edit: seems to be a problem with my Firefox profile. A new profile works. My apologies for polluting the comment section with this and thanks to the commenters for helping me figure this out.

Same issue in Chrome.

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#38

Post by axaxs »

lostapathy wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #16

There are places in Kansas where you can turn 360 degrees and see not a hill, tree, structure, or any landmarks at all (other than the road). You see the curve of the earth. It looks like a golden ocean.

Parts of Iowa and Illinois are much flatter than any parts of Kansas I’ve ever been to. Incredibly so. People romanticize this idea that Kansas is a flat nothing-land, luckily most of them also stay away. Kansas is only the 7th flattest state, even https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/flattest-st...

Thanks for the link, I was going to say how much flatter Florida is, but didn't have proof. From east to west across the state, elevation only changes like 80ft. Whereas Kansas is in the thousands.

However, because of all the development everywhere you look, I can see visibility being much better in the plains states.

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#39

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

tejohnso wrote: post #21
HJain13 wrote: post #7

So is rest of the earth; Youtube channel Vsauce covered this in one their videos https://youtu.be/mxhxL1LzKww?t=721

I recall Neil deGrasse Tyson mentioning that the whole earth would be smoother than the smoothest billiards ball if scaled down. I found that surprising.

Me too, I was going with "smoother than an orange", the billiard or bowling ball seem excessive - https://what-if.xkcd.com/46/ posted here

Re: Kansas is Flatter Than a Pancake (2003)

#40

Post by lostapathy »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #32
lostapathy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of Iowa and Illinois are much flatter than any parts of Kansas I’ve ever been to. Incredibly so. People romanticize this idea that Kansas is a flat nothing-land, luckily most of them also stay away. Kansas is only the 7th flattest state, even https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/flattest-st...

I think the big reason for KS's flat reputation vs places like Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Delaware is trees (or lack thereof). In SW Kansas (the flattest part of the state) you can drive for miles and miles of endless flatness without hardly seeing a single tree. There is just nothing that disrupts your view of the horizon. It is a bit of a different experience then being in a flat forest/swamp. (Al…

> (Also, the terrain of eastern/central KS is very different from the west. So if your only experience of KS is Wichita/Kansas City/Topeka, then you don't know how truly flat the other half of the state actually is...)

People say that, and every time I make a trip somewhere out west I haven't been previously I brace myself for the boredom. So far I've always been "disappointed" and have yet to find this boring and barren landscape I've been promised.

People don't like to believe it and that's ok, less people to share the landscape with.

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