Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography, notably including ancient near eastern cosmology. The model has undergone a recent resurgence as a conspiracy theory.
A sphere is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the center of the sphere, and r is the sphere's radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.
In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, which may be centered on Earth or the observer. If centered on the observer, half of the sphere would resemble a hemispherical screen over the observing location.
In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations from the surface of the globe are transformed to coordinates on a plane. Projection is a necessary step in creating a two-dimensional map and is one of the essential elements of cartography.
A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle. There are different genres of puzzles, such as crossword puzzles, word-search puzzles, number puzzles, relational puzzles, and logic puzzles. The academic study of puzzles is called enigmatology.
A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaicked pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture.
An armillary sphere is a model of objects in the sky, consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines of celestial longitude and latitude and other astronomically important features, such as the ecliptic. As such, it differs from a celestial globe, which is a smooth sphere whose principal purpose is to map the constellations. It was invented separately, in ancient China possibly as early as the 4th century BC and ancient Greece during the 3rd century BC, with later uses in the Islamic world and Medieval Europe.
Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of the figure of the Earth as a sphere. The earliest documented mention of the concept dates from around the 5th century BC, when it appears in the writings of Greek philosophers. In the 3rd century BC, Hellenistic astronomy established the roughly spherical shape of Earth as a physical fact and calculated the Earth's circumference. This knowledge was gradually adopted throughout the Old World during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. A practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano's circumnavigation (1519–1522).
The history of geodesy (/dʒiːˈɒdɪsi/) began during antiquity and ultimately blossomed during the Age of Enlightenment.
A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe of Earth is called a terrestrial globe. A model globe of the celestial sphere is called a celestial globe.
Get the Picture is a children's game show that aired from March 18 to December 6, 1991, with repeats until March 13, 1993 on Nickelodeon. Hosted by Mike O'Malley, the show featured two teams answering questions and playing games for the opportunity to guess a hidden picture on a giant screen made up of 16 smaller screens. The show was recorded at Nickelodeon Studios in Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida. The program's theme music and game music was composed by Dan Vitco and Mark Schultz, and produced by Schultz. Its tagline is The Great Frame Game.
De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure is a scientific work published in 1600 by the English physician and scientist William Gilbert. A highly influential and successful book, it exerted an immediate influence on many contemporary writers, including Francis Godwin and Mark Ridley.
A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide pieces along certain routes to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture, numbers, or letters.
Pieces is a 1994 puzzle game for the Super NES. It was developed by Prism Kikaku and published by Hori Electric in Japan and by Atlus Software in North America. In the game, the player has to solve jigsaw puzzles. In 2002, the spiritual successor developed by the same company, Jigsaw Madness, was released for the PlayStation.
Jigsaw puzzle accessories are the accessories used to assemble, store, and display jigsaw puzzles.
Stave Puzzles is an American jigsaw puzzle company located in Norwich, Vermont. The company was started in 1974 by Steve Richardson and Dave Tibbetts and was called Stave—a portmanteau of their first names. They manufacture hand cut jigsaw puzzles made from cherry-backed, 5-layered, 1⁄4-inch (6.4 mm) wood. Stave produces several different puzzles types ranging from traditional puzzles, teaser puzzles which can have many open areas within the puzzles, trick puzzles in which the puzzles can be put together in two or more ways of which only one is correct. They also create three-dimensional puzzles, limited edition puzzles, and complete custom puzzles. Each puzzle is provided in a green and blue box and does not include a picture of the completed puzzle. Stave Puzzles is the largest hand-cut jigsaw puzzle company in the United States and competes with laser-cutting companies like Liberty Puzzles and Artifact Puzzles.
The Impossiball is a rounded icosahedral puzzle similar to the Rubik's Cube. It has a total of 20 movable pieces to rearrange, which is the same as the Rubik's Cube, but all of the Impossiball's pieces are corners, like the Pocket Cube.
Tom Shannon is an American artist and inventor.
BLITS (Ball Lens In The Space) is a Russian satellite launched on September 17, 2009, as a secondary payload on a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite is totally passive and spherical, and is tracked using satellite laser ranging (SLR) by the International Laser Ranging Service. The design of BLITS is based on the optical Luneburg lens concept. The retroreflector is a multilayer glass sphere; it provides uniform reflection characteristics when viewed within a very wide range of angles, and can provide a cross-section sufficient for observations at low to medium orbit heights. A similar design was already tested on a smaller laser reflector carried on board of the METEOR-3M spacecraft launched on December 10, 2001.
The Puzzle Mansion is a museum in Tagaytay, Cavite, Philippines which hosts a collection of jigsaw puzzle which from 2012 to 2017 was recognized to be the biggest in the world according to Guinness.
