Maps and Mathematics of Jack L. Chalker's Well World

780 Southern Hexagons
780 Northern Hexagons
1560 Total Hexagons (p 62 MatWoS)

614.86 km is the length across of each hexagon (p 88 MatWoS)
355 km is the length of a side of each hexagon (p 62 MatWoS)

Avenue width: 35.5 meters or 1/10,000th of the length of a side of a hex (p 199 MatWoS)

Area of a Hexagon
½ x (6s) x h
½ x (6(355) x 307) note: h is the radius so it is half of 615
3,269,552^2 Area of a Hex. (This is roughly the size of India)

3,269,552^2 x 1560 (number of Hexes)
510,049,800^2 (projected area of Well World)

Area of Well World is 5.1 x 10^8 km^2 (p 55 MatWoS)
5.1 x 1,000,000,000
or 510,000,000^2

This is remarkably close to the surface area of the Earth which is 510,072,000^2

We are told that the hexes that border the equatorial barrier that separate the Northern from the Southern Hexes
are “two hexes wide and half a hex tall” (p 287 MatWoS). We are informed there are 24 such split hexagons. (p 71 QftWoS)
This would mean there are only 12 avenues if 24 refers to the actual hexagons and not the pairs. If pairs, then 24 Avenues.

No exact reference that I have found is given as to the width of the equatorial barrier, nor it's height. I will make it about 35
kilometers tall. 1/10 the height of a hexagon side.

Lastly the occupied surface area of the Well World is not all of it. The text below refences large black polar caps.

If all of this information is used along with the partial southern and northern maps to compile a model of the Well World,
there is a serious contradiction of information.

1. 780 Southern and Northern Hexagons will NOT map in a strip 10 Hexagons high with the split hexagon spacing shown
in the map. If we take the map as the more likely source, then the total count per side would be 800 hexagons. This would
allow for 20 Avenues total.

2. If we use the 24 split Hexagon data, along with the 12 avenue model, then the total hexagon and area count drops significantly.
Calculations show the total number of hexagons per hemisphere would be only 480. WAY too small to be the size stated in the book.
If we use 24 Avenue model then the total number of hexagons rise to 960. This is quite a bit larger than the size in the book, but not
out of the realm of possibility.

3. Either of the larger models, 20 or 24 Avenue, would result in a larger circumference than mentioned in Exiles at the Well of Souls,
which was 40,000 km.

No matter how you map the strip map onto a sphere, the southern most and northern most hexagons WILL be distorted. This is verified
in the The Return of Nathan Brazil. (p 128 TRoNB)

If we base our calculations for the equatorial circumference, planet diameter and radius on the hexagon dimensions given above:
(355 km on a side)

20 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 800 hexagon hemispheres, 42,600 km circumference, 13,560 km Diameter, 6,780 km Radius
24 Avenue Model, 10 hexagon high hemispheres = 960 hexagon hemispheres, 51,120 km circumference, 16,272 km Diameter, 8,136 km Radius

Earth, as we know it today, has an approximate 40,074 km circumference, 12,756 km Diameter, 6,378 km Radius

Subtracting the unoccupied area of the poles would still give us a nearly equivelant surface area to Earth.

I would infer with these discrepencies, that the 20 Avenue model is likely to be our closest one without seriously distorting the overall size
of the Well World.

If we take the 24 Avenue model, then the total number of hexagons per hemisphere is VERY much in error as well as the size of the planet itself.

Based on all this, I have begun modeling the Well of Souls based on the 20 Avenue calculations.

Refence text:

From Exiles at the Well of Souls:

"Look-you got all those jewel faces on the south, but you can tell it's lots of green and ocean and stuff like that. Our kind of world.
Then you got that great dark-amber strip around the equator, and then a whole different kind of world up top."

"The poles are interesting, too," Gil Zinder noted. "See how dark and thick they are, and how huge. Almost like great buildings
hundreds, maybe thousands, of kilometers across."

"Finally clipped it a little low, got within the Well's influence, and got nonteched, same as the first one. The reason you haven't
heard is that they had swung up North for a look. Near as we can tell, they went down in 1146 or 1318,  Uchjin or Ashinshyh.
Got anything on them?"

From Quest for Well of Souls:

A tall minotaur paused before the door, looking curiously for a moment at the symbol embossed on everything. Unlike his native
Dasheen, which used a standard hexagonal symbol, Yaxa used an ideogram which he mistook at first for a pair of stylized wings.
After a moment he realized that it was not so. Yaxa was a state along the Equatorial Barrier. It was composed of one half of a hex
split horizontally joined to one half of a hex split vertically. Only twenty-four such hexes were so split on either side of the Barrier.
The "wings" were, in fact, two half-hexes joined.

From The Return of Nathan Brazil:

Mavra smiled wanly. "Like anyplace else, really. Just imagine a planet that was a lot of little planets, fifteen hundred and sixty of
them, in fact, each roughly six hundred and fifteen kilometers wide at the Well World's equator—they get a little distorted as you
go toward the poles. Each one is shaped like a hexagon, the Markovians were nutty about the number six. Each one with its own
plants, insects, you name it, and all with different dominant races. All the carbon-based ones are south of the equator, seven
hundred and eighty in all. The ones north of the equator are non-carbon based. They can be anything."