Kansas is, in fact, flatter than a pancake

I'm enrolled in a GIS course here at UNCG (faculty get three free credit hours a semester), and we were talking about vertical profiling today. One of the case studies, from the journal Annals of Improbable Research, actually compared the vertical profiles of the state of Kansas (using a DEM) with that of a cooked pancake (using, incredibly, a confocal laser microscope) to test whether or not said state is, in fact, "flatter than a pancake." One can quibble with their selection of pancake (all pancakes, after all, are probably not equally flat), but they found that Kansas is the flatter of the two.

A couple of great quotes from the study:

Barring the acquisition of either a Kansas-sized pancake or a pancake-sized Kansas, mathematical techniques are needed to do a proper comparison.

The importance of this research dictated that we not be daunted by the 'No Food or Drink' sign posted in the microscopy room.

I am laughing out loud in my office as I write this...