Where Would You End Up If You Dug A Hole Through The Earth From St. Cloud?
Like most kids, when my family went to the beach I LOVED using a shovel and pail to dig as far into the sand as I possibly could. In addition to providing a protective moat feature for your extravagant sand castle you could also dream about digging a hole 'straight through to China,' as the saying went.
In fact, just the other day my family was at the playground when my son hopped onto one of those sandbox diggers and started digging the deepest hole he possibly could. My wife remarked that he was going to 'dig a hole to China,' which brought back the sun-soaked memories of holes dug in the sand by me long ago.
The comment piqued my curiosity, so I hopped on the good ol' internet to try to figure out if that would really be the case- if I dug a hole as far as I could straight through the center of the Earth, where would I actually end up?
As it turns out, this information is VERY readily available online. I used a site called Antipodes Map and, anticlimactically, it turns out that if you were to dig that hypothetical hole from ANYWHERE in the 48 contiguous states, you end up in the Indian Ocean.
If you truly wanted to dig a hole to China, St. Cloud is not the place to start. Instead, you will have to start your digging in Argentina. When you pop out on the other side, you will hit China. Like G.I. Joe said, 'knowing is half the battle.'