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GEOGRAPHY - The study of the physical features of the earth and its
atmosphere, and of human activity as it affects and is affected by these, including
the distribution of populations and resources, land use, and industries.
Both a map and a globe are pictures of a real place - the Earth (or part of it).
They often use similar colors and symbols, as you see if you compare the
map below to the globe above:
There are other ways that maps and globes are similar:
Neither one can represent everything on Earth, so they must limit themselves
as to what they focus on. The above images focus on political divisions of the world.
Topological maps and globes, for example, look quite different.
There are really only three differences between maps and globes:
Maps, being flat, distort distances over large areas. The actual Earth is pretty
close to being a sphere, so projecting that sphere onto a flat surface means that not
all parts of the map represent distances and areas accurately.
The poles are the natural starting place for the graticule, a spherical grid of
latitude and longitude lines. Lines of longitude, called meridians, run in a north-
south direction from pole to pole. Longitude is the angular measurement of a place
east or west of the prime meridian.
The primary unit in which longitude and latitude are given is degrees ().
There are 360 of longitude (180 E 180 W) and 180 of latitude (90 N 90 S).
Each degree can be broken into 60 minutes ('). Each minute can be divided into 60
seconds
The Equator separates the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The Equator
is at 0 latitude. The Prime Meridian separates the Eastern and Western
Hemispheres. The Prime Meridian runs through Greenwich, England and is at 0
longitude.
What are the meridian of longitude - Latitude is a measure of how far north or
south somewhere is from the Equator; longitude is a measure of how far east or
west it is from the Prime Meridian. Whilst lines (or parallels) of latitude all run
parallel to the Equator, lines (or meridians) of longitude all converge at the Earth's
North and South Poles.