Planetary ellipsoid

Okay kiddo, have you ever seen a globe? It's a round toy that shows us what the Earth looks like from space. But did you know that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere? It's actually shaped like an ellipsoid, which is a fancy word for a squished ball.

You might have seen a squished ball before - when you squeeze a ball, it becomes a little bit flattened on the top and bottom. That's kind of what's happening with the Earth. It's squished a little bit at the poles (the top and bottom of the globe) and bulging out at the equator (the middle of the globe).

This kind of shape is called a planetary ellipsoid. "Planetary" means having to do with planets, like Earth. "Ellipsoid" means a shape that's like a stretched-out circle - in this case, a squished ball.

So why is the Earth shaped this way? It's because of something called gravity. Gravity is what keeps us on the ground and makes planets orbit around the sun. But it also squishes planets into different shapes.

The Earth is spinning around like a top, and that spinning motion creates a force that makes the equator bulge out a little bit. But there's another force at play too - the gravity of the sun and the moon. They pull on the Earth, and that makes it squish a little bit more at the poles.

So when we look at the Earth from space, it looks like a slightly squished ball. That's a planetary ellipsoid, and it's the shape of our planet.