Random memory for the day:
I remember watching the Superfriends TV series when I was a little kid, and every time Superman would fly off into space, there’d be a shot of the earth as a globe, with Superman flying out from the northern hemisphere. As a stupid kid, I thought to myself, “I wonder why the earth is shown as an oblate spheroid? When I go out with my parents it was obviously flat.” (Paraphrasing a bit since when I was a kid I did not know the term “oblate spheroid”)
I have always had a curious scientific mind of course, and I was able to come up with the only possible rational explanation: The upper half of the sphere must be the atmosphere, and the surface of the world must be inside the sphere on a plane near the equator. That would explain why Superman always flies up from the upper half of the sphere!
It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.
(I was thinking of making a mock-up drawing of the above hypothesis and claiming that I drew it when I was four. But Ubuntu doesn’t seem to have any simple “Paint” application installed… )
Ubuntu doesn't have a simple Paint app installed but you might want to check out Gimp. It's a mere 16+MB download. But you don't have to draw it coz I also imagined it the same way when I was a kid so I'm thinking that's how a lot of kids might imagine it before it's explained in school. Though I thought the lower half of the sphere is the ocean where the earth floats (that's why it ends up in the middle or the plane near the equator as you describe it).
:)