GEOG 111: INTRODUCTION TO PHYSICAL

GEOGRAPHY

Lecture 3:
Introduction to the Geographic Grid

Instructor: Dr. Peter Bilson Obour

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 Learning Goals

 Understand Geographic Grid

– Longitudes
– Latitudes
 Time zones

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 Grid System

 To measure accurately the position (location) of any place on

the surface of the earth, a grid system has been set up. It
pinpoints to location by using two coordinates: latitude and
longitude

 Longitudes and Latitudes are purely human invention

(imaginary lines)
 They are tied to two fixed points established by earth
motions: the poles, or ends of the earth's rotational axis

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Grid System

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 Longitudes

 Longitude is an imaginary line running in the north-south

direction

 It divides the globe to east-west locations

 All lines of longitude converge or come together at the North

Pole and at the South Pole

 They are the widest apart at the equator

 Lines of longitude are called "meridians"

 Longitude 0o is referred to as “Prime Meridian” and the

antipodal line is Longitude 180o
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 Longitudes
 Prime Meridian is the dividing line between East and
West

 Longitudes to the left of prime meridian are in the

West and Right are to the East

 Westward Longitudes are indicated by negative

signs or labeled West (W).

 Eastward longitudes have no sign but can be

indicated by East (E).

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Meridians (Longitudes)

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 Latitudes

• Latitudes represent north-south locations in reference to

the Equator

• They are shown on maps or on the globe by series of

east-west running lines that are parallel to the equator

• Equator marks the midpoint between the two poles

• Equator is a latitude

• Lines of latitudes are called "parallels"

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Parallels or Latitudes

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 Longitude and Latitude

 Longitude = East-West location

 It is shown by a series of North-South running lines called meridians

 Latitude = North-South location

 it is shown by a series of East-West running lines called parallels

 There are an infinite number of latitudes and longitudes because every

place on Earth is at the intersection of a particular parallel and a
particular meridian

 Maps and globes show only few selected parallels and meridians, which
are mathematically convenient and are also strategically located e.g., by
tens or fifteens or thirties.

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 Great and Small Circles

 The geographic grid is built of intersecting great and

small circles

 A great circle is created whenever a sphere is divided

exactly in half by a plane (imaginary flat surface) passed
right through its center

 The intersection of the plane with the surface of the

sphere is the largest possible circle you could manage
to draw on that sphere's surface.

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Great Circles

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 Small Circle

A small circle is any circle

produced by planes passing
through a sphere anywhere
except through its exact center

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 Relevance of latitude and longitude

 The equator is a great circle drawn along as latitude of 0°.

 The North Pole and the South Pole are single points at 90°
N or S

 All other parallels are small circles drawn parallel to the

equator

 All meridians are half-sections of great circles, all of them

coming together at both the North Pole and the South Pole

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 Relevance of latitude and longitude

 Latitude shows distance north or south of the equator

 The latitude of any given place is its distance, measured in degrees

of arc, from the equator

 Latitude is reckoned in both directions from the equator, so the

equator is numbered 0° and the poles 90°N and 90°S.

• Except for the equator, latitudes are indicated by "N" or "S" after the
number given for the latitude

• It helps to know which hemisphere we are looking for. The numbering

is the same in each hemisphere (northern or Southern).

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Equator to the poles

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 How latitude is represented on a globe or
map
 Cartographers use parallels to depict latitude

 Parallels are entire small circles EXCEPT

– The equator – great circle
– Poles (North and South) which are points

 Parallels are always parallel to each other, they do not cross (except the
two poles which are points in the extreme ends)

 Parallels always cross lines of longitude at right angles (except the poles)

• An infinite number of parallels can, theoretically, be drawn on the globe,

which means all locations on Earth lie on a parallel

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 Longitudes

 Longitude is distance east or west of a base line or prime meridian


 The longitude of any given place is its distance, measured in degrees of arc,
from this base line

 Picking a base line from which to begin numbering longitude was a subject of
controversy

 There is no such naturally obvious base line for longitude, and so each country
figured that the meridian of its capital should merit the honor

 In 1871, the International Geographical Congress (IGC) met to resolve the issue
and recommended that the meridian passing through the old (1675) Royal
Observatory in Greenwich, England should be the common zero. The proposal
didn't get too far, given all the national pride problems that kept erupting.

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 Longitudes

 The IGC met again in 1875 and, again, things weren't proceeding too well. The
French did suggest that they might be willing to relinquish their demand for Paris as
the Prime Meridian if everyone else agreed to sign onto the metric system, which had
been developed during the French Revolution. This did pave the way for a break in
the logjam, though

 In 1884, the British agreed to adopt the metric system in exchange for the honor of
having the Prime Meridian passing through a London suburb

 The Greenwich Meridian was finally passed at the International Meridian Conference
held in Washington, DC, attended by delegates for 41 nations

 Greenwich probably won because the USA had already decided to use it rather than
Washington, DC
 Also, at the time, 72% of the entire world's trade was carried on ships that used the
Greenwich Meridian: This was the age of empire, and Britain had colonies all over
the world

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 Longitude
 This choice of Greenwich worked out fairly well internationally:
– The Greenwich Meridian makes a mathematically convenient International Date
Line of 180°
– The antipodal meridian to Greenwich's is out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
where the date issue can inconvenience the fewest people in the sparsely settled
mid-Pacific. Not that the British was influential but it worked out rather well in the
end.
– Greenwich is pronounced "GREN-itch," not "Green-witch"

 Longitude is reckoned in both directions from the Greenwich Meridian, so this base
line is numbered 0° and the antipodal line is numbered 180°

 The reason that 180° is the top number possible for longitude is that, by starting at
the base line (an arbitrary choice of a meridian, which is one half of a great circle
stretching from the North Pole to the South Pole), we measure one half of a circle to
get to the antipodal meridian (the other half of the same great circle that the prime
meridian is on).
– A circle is 360° of arc.
– 360° divided by 2 is 180°

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The International Date Line

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 Longitudes

 Except for the prime meridian and the antipodal meridian (most
of which is the International Date Line), the suffix "E" or "W"
must appear after the number given for the longitude any time
you indicate a longitude or you can use negative sign (-) for
West

 It helps to know which hemisphere we are talking about, since

the numbering is the same in each hemisphere

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 Time Zone

 We saw that longitude and time are closely related: Location on longitude 38 o
and 39o W is basically a matter of converting the difference in time (minutes and
seconds) between the two places into a difference in longitude

 Richmond VA, is located on 37° 30' N 77° 20' W while Cleveland OH, is on 41°
24' N 81° 51' W, yet these two cities use the same time

 Your watch is not keeping correct sun time. That is, it does not show 12:00
when the sun is due south of us at its highest point of the day. There are two
reasons for this discrepancy

– The sun will hit the highest spot in the sky somewhat sooner than "noon"
on your clock from the July (aphelion) until the January (perihelion) and it will
arrive somewhat later than "noon" on your clock from the January (perihelion) until the
July (aphelion). This discrepancy has to do with the equation of time related to the
planet's elliptical orbit
– The other reason is your watch keeps local ZONE time, not local sun time

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Elliptical Orbit

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 Standard Time
 It used to be that we all independently set our watches to fit the local sun time at our exact
location

 If you moved around as little as 150 km, your watch would be out of synch with the local sun
time, and you have to constantly adjust your watch (or missing the appointments ).

 It became an issue when railroad construction began to open up travel opportunities and
needed to change one rail to another in the nineteenth century. For most people, this
discrepancy between your watch and the local sun time was a minor inconvenience, but for
the railroads it was a very serious problem, indeed. As train traffic increased, it became
difficult to coordinate the locations of trains and the times they were to be on particular
stretches of track. It wouldn't do to have two trains, each assiduously trying to keep its own
local time accurately, arrive at the same siding on the same time.

 The railroads developed zone time.

 One Dr. William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828) in England came up with the idea, and it was
touted by Abraham Follett Osler (1808- 1903).

 A British railroad, the Great Western Railroad, adopted London standard time for the first time
in November 1840.

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 Daylight Saving Time
 Daylight Savings was introduced towards the end of World War I, for seven months in
1918 and 1919. It was to save fuel for the war effort by getting people to go to bed
earlier, so they would shut off the lights early. By getting them out of bed earlier in
the mornings in the summer, you get them to utilize the earlier daybreak in summer,
which would also help shave the electricity bills
 This was one unpopular law and Americans rose up and forced Congress to abolish
it in 1919, over President Wilson's veto.

 World War II came. The United States went back on Daylight Saving Time, again to
conserve fuel for the war effort. It stayed on year-long Daylight Savings for a few
years, from 2 February 1942 through 30 September 1945
 From 1945 to 1966, the Federal government did not mandate it, states and counties
and even cities were free to choose DST

 Congress finally passed the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which President Johnson
signed into law on 13 April 1966. This mandated consistent application of DST within
each state participating in the program.

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 Daylight Saving Time

 In 1986, Congress voted to change the date on which DST starts

from the last weekend in April to the first Sunday in April

 This extends the fuel-saving virtues of DST three weeks. So the

Daylight Savings was from the middle of the FIRST weekend in
April to the middle of the LAST weekend in October. It is on the
Saturday/Sunday midnight

 This was changed in 2006 so that DST begins in the middle of

March instead of the first week of April- reduced by three weeks due
to soaring energy bills

 During Daylight Savings, we all sort of pretend we live in the next

time zone east of us. So, that should tell you what to do with the
clocks

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 Online Sources for fun

• http://www.physicalgeography.net/
• http://www.bcca.org/misc/qiblih/latlong_us.html#OHIO
• http://geography.about.com/library/graphics/timezones
1.jpg
• http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1519magellan.ht
ml
• http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/world_tzones.html
• http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog140/lectures/
time.html

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End of Class

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