maximillian12

Could I take it right back to the beginning? In the beginning studiot said that, if the bottom of the lake was flat, the surface of the lake could also be flat. Does studiot stand by that? In the above post it seems that he is now saying something different: "If the bottom is flat the water surface cannot be different from flat by more than the depth." That makes sense to me - though wouldn't it also be true that the place where the "difference from flat" is equal to the "depth" would be called "the shore"? It does seem that evidence has been presented to show that the shape of the ocean floor does affect the shape of the ocean surface. But it doesn't seem that evidence has been presented to show that a shallow lake which is flat on the bottom would have a surface whose shape is in any way influenced by that.

I will ditto this. By "reference", what I guess Michel means is a link to a study in which the shape of the bed of a body of water is shown to impact on the shape of its surface. In another post, for example, you linked to Seasat. Does that mean there is somewhere where we can read that Seasat measured what you are saying?

I don't have autocad but if anyone does - or some other similar way to plot an arc - here is a table showing the geoid height radius distances from the centre of the earth to points along the experimenters' route. As we can see, the radius increases about 1.667 meters for every 604 metres traveled. Combined with the above data, this should give a more accurate image of the shape of the surface of the lake. I'd attach them in a spreadsheet too but don't seem to have permission. *Note: lake elevation was entered as 105m amsl.