How many miles is one degree of longitude equal to at the equator? at the north pole?

Question

circumference is about 25,000 miles

Can someone explain how I can answer this question?

Answer 1

The first part is fairly easy.

If you use 25,000 miles as the circumference at the equator, and you know that there are 360° of longitude, by dividing 25,000 by 360, you get 69.44 miles per degree.

(By dividing 360 by 25,000, you get degrees per mile, which is .0144.)

At the true North Pole (as opposed to the magnetic North Pole), there is zero distance through all 360°.

Therefore, the answer to the second part of your question is zero miles.

By the way, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old!

Answer 2

divide 25,000 by 360 degrees. Since the poles are single points, 1/360 of a point (undefined) is as close as you can get.