Garden gnome goes nomad to showcase gravity

"A nomadic gnome is travelling the world to highlight a little-known quirk of our planet: gravity changes depending on where you are. Thanks to the Earth's bulginess, this globe-trotting garden gnome weighed significantly more at the South Pole than anywhere else in the world he has been weighed.

Rather than being a perfect sphere, the Earth bulges in the middle. That means points at the poles are closer to the core than points on the equator. That distance, plus some extra gravity-counterbalancing inertia from the Earth's spin, means that you - or a gnome - would weigh more at the South Pole than in Hawaii."
Short Sharp Science / read more