Ask most anyone and they'll tell you that the highest mountain in the world is Mount Everest. And, indeed, Mount Everest is 29,028 feet tall according to the most recent measurements.
However, that's 29,028 feet above sea level, which seems to be a strange way to measure mountains. After all due to the orbit of the moon, the tides are always going in and out, changing the sea level constantly. Not only that, but because of the shape of the earth, more gravity is concentrated in the polar regions of the earth than at the equatorial regions, pulling more water toward the poles. So sea-level is quite a variable benchmark.We decided that maybe it would be more productive to abandon the sea-level benchmark and measure the height of mountains from their base to their tip. Then we'd at least have the land to give us a benchmark rather than the ever changing sea.
If we used this measurment we saw that Denali is the world's tallest above water mountain and that Mauna Kea is the world's tallest partially submerged mountain.
But, as we thought about it, how in the world do you tell where the base of a mountain is? Do you start with the shallow inclines that precede the steeper angles? Or do you go right to where the steep slopes really start?
In the end, wouldn't our ideas of what constitutes the base of a mountain be as variable as sea level?
So we searched for a better benchmark. Something unmoving. Something we could all agree on.
We came up with the core of the earth. Since we know the circumference of the earth, we can plot mathematically where the core is. Then we'd just have to find which mountain was furthest from the core of the earth.
That mountain happens to be Mount Chimborazo. It is located in Ecuador. And though it is shorter from base to tip that both Denali and Mount Everest, since the earth is tomato shaped, and the equatorial regions are furthest from the core, Chimborazo is the tallest mountain in the world.
What we're doing here is getting a concrete look at how the medium affects what you see. When we decided that this highest mountain in the world would be the one most elevated above sea level, we came up with Mt. Everest. When decided that base to tip measurement would be better, we came up with Denali. When we took the earth's core as our benchmark we came up with Chimbarozo.Three different tallest mountains in the world using three different media.
The medium we use changes our perception of the world.
