Longitude & Latitude Help PLis?!?

Question

which one is which!!!!???im so confused..pliss help!! =[

Answer 1

I think the three answers I've seen are misleading. Longitude , called meridians, do indeed go up and down, north and south, meeting at the poles. And latitude , called parallels, circle around left and right, east and west, never meeting each other.

BUT (and here's the problem) a reading tells you how far you are, while a reading tells you about being !!!

For example, New Orleans is at 90 degrees . The 90th west meridian (longitude line) passes through New Orleans, which is of London (the prime meridian).

The north 49th parallel (latitude line), which runs east and west, forms most of the border between the U.S. and Canada. If you're driving north in the U.S., you'll cross into Canada at the 49th parallel of latitude.

To recap: (1) Longitude lines run north and south, but they tell you how far east or west you are; and (2) latitude lines run east and west, but they tell you how far north or south you are.

No wonder this stuff is confusing!!! Hope this helped, anyway.

Answer 2

Put simply, longitude is up and down and latitude is left to right, these lines form a grid in which we use to navigate and plot points around the world. If you can remember that basic idea you're halfway there. The major differences between the two is that lines of longitude all pass through the north pole and the south pole, if you read further into it these lines can be considered "great circles" or put another way if you sliced the earth along these lines the center of the circle would be the center of the earth. All are the same distance in length and all converge at the north and south poles. The only significant line of longitude in common knowledge is the prime meridian which is the line at which passes through Greenwich England and is the basis of how we measure time. Lines of latitude are not all great circles and do not converge at any point, these include the equator (the only great circle in latitude) the tropic of cancer, the tropic of capricorn. One major thing to remember is this, the reason that one set of lines (longitude) all converge at the top and bottom of the earth and the other set of lines (latitude) do not is such that all lines will intercept eachother at exactly 90 degrees or a right angle, which makes drawing maps and plotting points much easier.

Answer 3

Longitude goes the "long" way (vertically) north to south. Latitude goes east to west

Answer 4

I always used the mnemonic device "LAT is FLAT" growing up, that is, latitude lines run east-west making them appear horizontal.