Talk:Water hemisphere

Maximizes water area
Assertion that the water hemisphere "does not necessarily" contain the most water area is poppycock--whoever made such an edit ought to have made sure of his math first. The explanation follows:

The opposite, land hemisphere is defined as maximizing land area. As the total land area stays constant, it follows that the water hemisphere minimizes land area. It is thus the hemisphere with the least land, and thus necessarily the hemisphere with the most water area. 194.0.112.8 (talk) 22:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that the assertion that the land and water hemispheres have to be complementary makes an assumption about how land and water are distributed. Let's say all of your land was in a strip along the equator, then any hemisphere centered on the equator would be a land hemisphere, and any hemisphere centered on the pole would be a water hemisphere. Just playing around with Google Earth (I know - not very precise) it looks like if you center more around Samoa you can cut Antarctica out. A good opportunity to expand the article with some better proof either way. Eassin (talk) 21:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)