Empirical Earth · Gravity, Buoyancy & the Air

Eight inches of ocean — where “sea level” had to be defined twice

The claim

“Water always finds its level, and level means flat.”

What is true

◆ Refutation Water does find its level, and nobody disputes it.

What is measured

The canal’s own documents carry two separate reference levels, one for each end, because mean sea level at the Pacific end sits about eight inches higher than at the Caribbean end. Both are sea level. They are not the same height.

What would show this is wrong

a single mean sea level datum serving both ends of the Panama Canal in its own engineering documents; or a demonstration that still water settles to a plane over distances where the direction of a plumb line measurably changes.

Sources

  1. Panama Tides. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1926, Vol. 52/4/278. Sixteen years of American tide records at the canal entrances; the higher mean level at Balboa; and the observation link
  2. The Pacific-Atlantic mean sea level difference at the Panama Canal. Satellite altimetry giving the Pacific side about 20 cm, eight inches, above the Atlantic side, attributed to warmer and f link
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