Warmup 9/16/15

Where in theworld do youthink thispicture wastaken? Whatclues do yousee that mighthelp?

Objective Tonight’s Homework

To learn about landmarks and position systems

Read section 3.3Do p 58: 6-8

Where am I? Landmarks

We’re going to start today with an activity. Oneimportant thing about maps is landmarks. If you’re out hiking, a map is worthless if you don’t know where you are on it.

We have amazing maps of the whole world, but they don’t do any good if you don’t know where you are!

So we’re going to spend a chunk of class today learning broad landmarks. If you were dropped randomly anywhere in the world, would you be able to figure out where you were?

Let’s find out!

Latitude and Longitude

Latitude and Longitude form an invisible grid on the earth. We use this grid to explain where something is when we don’t have many landmarks. This can also be used to give an exact position for people that don’t know the landmarks in an area very well.

Latitude and Longitude

Latitude lines run in rings parallel to the equator. (Think lat = flat.) These go from 0 degrees at the equator up to 90 degrees at the north pole and -90 degrees at the south pole.

We live almost exactly at 40 degrees north.

(Baselineroad inBoulder isexactly40 degreesnorth.)

Latitude and Longitude

Longitude lines run from the north pole to the south pole. 0 degrees longitude is at a place called Greenwich Observatory in England. We call this the “prime meridian”. Longitude runs to 180 degrees west and 180 degrees east. We’re just past 105 degreeswest here.

Latitude and Longitude

There’s a bit more we can talk about, too. We’ve all heard about time zones, but why exactly do they exist? Well, imagine it’s about 6:00 pm in California. The sun is getting low and it’s evening. Now imagine we look at someone in Florida at exactly the same time. Is the sun just setting where they are?

No! It’s already dark. So itwouldn’t make sense to callit 6:00 pm there, would it?

Latitude and Longitude

Since the earth is round, we have to understand that the time of day will look different depending on where you are.

This is what time zones are for. If the sun is just rising in California at 6 am, people in New York will look up and the sun will lookfor them like it does when it’s 9 am. Due to political and other reasons, the linesdon’t run completely straight.

Exit Question

Which of the below is impossible?

30 degrees north latitude15 degrees west longitude20 degrees north longitude88 degrees south latitude150 degrees east longitudeAll of the above are possible