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Geography for Travel Agents, 3
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GEOGRAPHY
FOR TRAVEL AGENTS: Latitude and Longitude
One of the
trickier concepts for travel agents to master is latitude and longitude.
These are the invisible lines that are drawn around the globe by geographers
so they can very precisely specify the exact location of a place.
Latitude measures
distance north and south of the equator and the lines of latitude
drawn on a map run east and west (left to right).
Longitude,
on the other hand, measures distance east and west around the globe
and lines of longitude run north to south on a map (up and down).
Are we confused yet?
I keep trying
to find an easy way to keep the two straight in my mind but the best
I've been able to come up with is to link up latitude with a lateral
pass in football. Get it? A lateral pass goes across the field (like
lines of latitude) not up and down the field (like lines of longitude).
Maybe you can come up with a better memory device, but this works
for me.
YOU ALMOST
NEED A DEGREE TO UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF!
Both latitude
and longitude are measured in "degrees" and it has nothing
to do with temperature! As I'm sure you remember from school, a circle
contains 360 degrees. So does the globe! So if you travel 180 degrees
from the North Pole you reach the South Pole, half way around. If
you travel 90 degrees from either pole you reach the equator, which
we now recognize as the line of latitude that rings the earth round
its middle. Each degree, by the way, is comprised of sixty "minutes,"
which has nothing to do with the TV show.
Latitude is
measured from the equator which is, the geographers have decided,
at zero degrees latitude. As we move north or south of the equator
it's 90 degrees to either pole. Go 23.5 degrees north and you're at
"23.5 degrees north latitude." Go 23.5 degrees in the opposite
direction and you're at "23.5 degrees south latitude."
Longitude
is measured east and west from an imaginary line that runs north and
south through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, which the
geographers have decided is zero degrees longitude or, more grandly,
"The Prime Meridien." Why England? Because when all this
was being figured out, England owned most of the world and what it
didn't own it figured it would own soon enough. So it made perfect
sense to the scientists wrestling with the thorny problem of measuring
their world that the world began in Greenwich.
As you move
east from Greenwich, you measure in degrees of east longitude; as
you move west, you measure in degrees of west longitude. Go 180 degrees
in either direction and you bump into another imaginary line, the
International Date Line, that runs north and south through the Pacific
Ocean and is exactly opposite Greenwich on the globe. (Actually, the
International Date Line is not EXACTLY a straight line because it
gets pulled east or west to suit the convenience of various islands
that lie along or near its path. But that's another story.)
The great
advantage of this system is that you can pinpoint any spot on earth
in terms of latitude and longitude, something which comes as a great
comfort to ships' captains and airline pilots. For example, if I say
I'm at 41 degrees, 45 minutes north latitude and 87 degrees, 40 minutes
west longitude, you'd know I was in Chicago, wouldn't you? Well, you
probably would once you got the hang of things.
One anomaly
of this system is that while you can only have a maximum of 90 degrees
latitude (north and south), you can have a maximum of 180 degrees
of longitude (east and west). Another is that the distance between
degrees of latitude is always about 70 miles (69.1 to be exact), while
the distance between lines of longitude varies with the latitude.
If you think of the space between two lines of longitude ten or fifteen
degrees apart as a slice taken out of an orange, you can visualize
this fact. At the ends of the slice (the poles, if you will), it's
a very short distance from side to side, while the slice is thickest
in the middle (the equator).
SO WHAT?
Why is all
this important to you, the travel agent? Well besides looking cool
and clever and showing off at cocktail parties, if you know something
about latitude and longitude, you will know something about weather.
For example, I used earlier the example of being 23.5 degrees north
or south of the equator. As it happens, those lines of latitude mark
the limits of "The Tropics." Any place between those lines
of latitude will be warm most of the year. As you approach the equator
(that is, get closer to zero degrees north or south latitude) you
find places that are HOT all of the year. Unless of course they are
on top of mountains, which you learned about in an earlier lesson.
As a little
exercise, take out a good map and determine the latitude and longitude
of where you live. Then figure out the latitude and longitude for
some of your favorite vacation spots. Play around and have some fun.
Gradually, you'll catch on and latitude and longitude will become
comfortable concepts.
If you'd like
to quiz yourself on the subject, check out this test for a course
at the University of Missouri, called Geography 137:
http://ludwig.missouri.edu/137/lat-lab1.html
Don't worry,
it gives the answers!
And if you'd
like to read a fun book on how it all got started, pick up a copy
of "Longitude" by Dava Sobel. It's a short, fascinating
read, even if she does give away the ending in the first couple of
pages.
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