Brief History of “Earthoid” at MC Germantown
Back in 2019 we asked 100 MC-Germantown students if they knew what the giant globe on their campus was. Only 16 of them were aware that it is actually a water tank!
Earthoid, as it was named by students who designed the tank, is owned and maintained by the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission. It holds two million gallons of water!
Per Atlas Obscura:
“In 1980, the students of Montgomery College’s Germantown campus were tasked with designing the water tank that stood on the edge of their university. After a vote, the students designed that the spherical tank would emulate the Blue Marble. It was dubbed “Earthoid.”
The school commissioned artist Peter Freudenberg, who had worked on similar spherical projects in the past, to paint the scale model globe. He used a National Geographic globe image and satellite photos from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for reference.
Two months later, the gigantic Mother Earth mural was complete. The Earthoid has gotten a new paint job since then, but still stands today and acts as a powerful symbol for environmental protection every year on Earth Day.”
The Montgomery College- Germantown newspaper is aptly named… The Globe.
Photo courtesy of The MoCoShow’s eye in the sky, @DronifyDMV
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2 comments
Neat. That water tank is one of the few whose geometry makes it unsuitable for attaching powerful microwave radiation antenna, as explained at darnestown net website. This explains the doubly-tall tower immediately adjacent, one of over 300,000 erected so far throughout the USA (of millions more to come, in smaller versions, on tops of telephone poles, built into residential housing power meters, etc.), with uncanny affinity for public schools and fire stations (thus explaining Tom Hanks’ “brain cloud” suffered in the movie JOE VS THE VOLCANO, the first silverscreen collaboration of Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan and Spielberg), according to antennafinder com website. Homework: (A) If the diameter of the globe were doubled, what would be the resulting increase in water? (B) If the power (or simply number) of the microwave antenna were doubled, what would be the effect on the surrounding residents’ health?
might wanna loosen that tinfoil on your head there, bub