When Jerry Dobson moved to Kansas in 2001, he was bombarded with questions and quips about the "flatness" of his new state. He had spent his life in the mountains of Georgia and Tennessee, so he had been used to dramatic topography.

So when Dobson arrived in Kansas, he "expected it to be flat but looked around and saw hills," he told National Geographic.

"And the more I studied, the more I realized the Great Plains as a whole are not as flat as people think," said Dobson, a professor of geography at the University of Kansas in Lawrence and the president of the American Geographical Society.

In fact, a lot of states aren't as level or as