Is the earth round? Then why…

The simplest of things are often the hardest to explain.

The other day when I was helping my daughter with her geography homework, she came up with a very valid question. If the earth was round like a ball she asked, why don’t people in the southern hemisphere fall off?

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I tried my best to explain to her that it was the earth’s gravity, which pulls every thing to its center. That’s why people or things don’t fall off the earth’s surface. The earth is like a magnet with people stuck to it.

I took a few magnetic chess pieces and assuming them to be people, I stuck them on a metallic globe to explain how it worked. It went fine in the northern hemisphere but when I stuck the magnetic pieces in Australia, she sprang up another question that got me thinking. Are people in Australia upside down? She asked. Looking at the globe they indeed looked upside down.

So are people in the southern hemisphere stuck to the earth upside down, hanging from their feet like the magnetic pieces on the globe?

I am looking at the globe from a distance. So lets assume that we look at the earth through a powerful telescope from space or the moon, will people, buildings, trees really appear upside down in the southern hemisphere.

I’m still trying to figure out the answer.