#2632: Greatest Scientist explain

[A segment of the Earth is shown where the ground is noticeably curved, low at the edges and highest in the middle. On the left of the panel, there are one tall, but leaning tower, three smaller buildings, two trees and a small plant representing Pisa, Italy. The tower represents the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Cueball is standing in front of the left most building. The height of the tower is labeled h1 against a locally non-leaning dotted line, the length of its shadow upon the grounds is marked L1, the angle from ground at the end of the shadow to the tip of the tower is labelled θ1. Attached to the top of the tower, there is a kite string which goes in a upward sloping curve to a kite. The kite is in the top right corner with it’s tail pointing away from the kite to the right. Just above and to the left of the kite there is a cloud with a lightning bolt coming out beneath it. Beneath the kite there is a string down to a rectangular device, that seems to have two arms beneath it. These seems to have dropped two items, as indicated with dotted lines going down towards the ground in two parallel and straight lines. It turns out to be two disks that fell from the kite, and just above the ground they hit a bell supported on curved pin. As they hit the bell is makes two sounds. Next to the bell is a small dog with it’s tongue hanging out. A horizontal line above the dog and its shadow is labeled (and possibly broken up by) h2, the length of its shadow on the ground L2, and the angle up from the far end of the shadow to the tip of the dog θ2. To the left of the dog there is a three and two smaller plants. Between Pisa and the dog, near the middle part of the curved there are various distant pyramids near the horizon. This section of the ground are very nearly horizontal to the image. All buildings in ‘Pisa’, the dropping disks and the supported bell/dog at the other side of the scene and various trees and plants around each end are locally-vertical in a radial manner, except for the Tower Of Pisa which is almost vertical to the image in exhibiting its local ’lean’. The two θ angles are clearly different but the dotted diagonal segments they define head in the same drawn direction from the tips of the shadows to the tips of their objects. The Sun is not illustrated but would be somewhere to the left of the image and upwards to cause the measured shadows.]

Left labels: h1 θ1 L1

Right labels: h2 θ2 L2

Bell: Ding ding

[Caption below the panel:]

History’s greatest scientist was probably that one who measured the shadow of the Leaning Tower of Pisa while flying a kite into a distant thunderstorm where lightning caused two moldy Petri dishes to fall onto a bell next to a salivating dog whose shadow angle determined the circumference of the Earth.