I wonder if 3d-printing technology is sufficiently precise that it could render a reasonably accurate scale model of the Earth -- complete with mountains, suboceanic canyons and spheroidal oblateness.
@woozle I think the issue is at any reasonable 3d printer scale you won't see any of those features, even at super high accuracy
@noiob I guess that's part of what I'm wondering.
I guess it's time for some math...
mean diameter: 12742 km
highest mountain: 8.85 km
That means that the highest mountain (Everest) is ~1/1440th of the overall diameter.
...so if we printed Earth at 10 cm diameter, Everest would be a bump ~ .07 mm high...
mm, yeah, probably not very noticeable -- though if the printing were precise enough, I'm thinking maybe it would add some subtle texture?
(My brain has a lot of ideas, but only some of them are useful.)
@woozle if I really wanted to print a scale model of the earth I'd probably split it into tiles and print those separately, standing on an edge to get smoother results. For a model I'd also go with the trick basically all topographic maps use and scale the elevation deltas up 5× or so