Latitude & Longitude

So you're looking at a map and you want to know where a city or a place is. And you want to tell someone else. How do you do it?

Let's say you want to tell your friend where Paris is. You could give its RELATIVE LOCATION.

You could say, "Well, it's in France." OR You could say, "France is south of England or East of Spain" That might work. Relative location refers to locating a place relative to other landmarks. It is the most common way to describe where a place is. 

But what if your friend wants to know exactly where Paris is? You need to use latitude and longitude. This is ABSOLUTE LOCATION. It is exact location using the grid lines on a map or globe. 

Latitude and longitude are two of the most basics terms in all of geography. To understand them, you need to think of Earth as a globe. Further, you need to think of the globe as divided into lots of little sections. Some go east. Some go west. Some go north. Some go south.

Latitude
Horizontal mapping lines on Earth are lines of latitude. They are known as "parallels" of latitude, because they run parallel to the equator. One simple way to visualize this might be to think about having imaginary horizontal "hula hoops" around the earth, with the biggest hoop around the equator, and then progressively smaller ones stacked above and below it to reach the North and South Poles

Latitude lines are a numerical way to measure how far north or south of the equator a place is located. The equator is the starting point for measuring latitude--that's why it's marked as 0 degrees latitude. The number of latitude degrees will be larger the further away from the equator the place is located, all the way up to 90 degrees latitude at the poles. Latitude locations are given as __ degrees North or __ degrees South.

Longitude

Vertical mapping lines on Earth are lines of longitude, known as "meridians". One simple way to visualize this might be to think about having hula hoops cut in half, vertically positioned with one end at the North Pole and the other at the South Pole.

Longitude lines are a numerical way to show/measure how far a location is east or west of a universal vertical line called the Prime Meridian. This Prime Meridian line runs vertically, north and south, right over the British Royal Observatory in Greenwich England, from the North Pole to the South Pole. As the vertical starting point for longitude, the Prime Meridian is numbered 0 degrees longitude.

To measure longitude east or west of the Prime Meridian, there are 180 vertical longitude lines east of the Prime Meridian and 180 vertical longitude lines west of the Prime Meridian, so longitude locations are given as __ degrees east or __ degrees west. The 180 degree line is a single vertical line called the International Date Line, and it is directly opposite of the Prime Meridian.

Spend three minutes watching this video about Latitude and Longitude. 

Spend three more minutes singing about it because its good for you to hear the information in more than one way. :) 

Comment: If you were to visit any city in the world where would it be? Tell us and provide us with the relative location and absolute location.