flat earth - a thought experiment?

Suppose the earth is flat.

There are many ways to transform a sphere onto a flat surface, e.g. the Peters and Mercator projections.

However an earth with corners or frilly edges is hardly believable.

the diameter is 7900 miles, so the circumference is 7900 * pi() = 24800 miles

So lets do a simple transformation, by allowing the Greenwich.meridian to remain as 12400 miles. This then forms the diameter of a circular flat earth. so the 180 degree meridian (IDL) would be pi/2 times as long i.e. 19500 miles.

You may think - this cant be right - inhabitants at the edges would be dragged off by gravity towards Cameroon on the West coast of Africa. Nonsense. Common experience is that wherever we are, we are held down to the ground beneath us. "Dust we are and to dust returneth"

And if you take a magnet it will stick to the nearest piece of iron, and not go whizzing off to a "better" place!

Now in order to have night and day, and see the sun rising and setting our flat earth must spin like a flipped coin, with its axis along the Greenwich meridian. The periphery at the equator would be tracing out a circle of pi*d = 39000 miles, and travelling at 39000/24 mph = 28600 m/s and experiencing a centripetal acceleration of v^2/r = (28600 m/s)^2 / (r = 12400/2miles = 6200 miles = 10,000,000m)

whence A = 82 m/s^2

A mass of 1kg would experience an attractive force due to gravity of 1 * 9.81 = 9.81 Newtons (or 1kgf)

and a centripetal force of 1 * 82 = 82 Newtons (or 8.4kgf)

So those poor inhabitants would go flying off!

Of course, as above, we know that wont really happen.

I'll be interested in any contributions to extend the scope of this experiment.