Eli5 why there are more lines of Longitude then Latitude
In: 35
Each line of latitude describes a circle, but each line of longitude only describes a semicircle. If you walk along an entire latitude line, you end up where you started, but to walk along an entire longitude line, you have to start one of the poles and end at the other. In terms of describing a plane intersecting the Earth, some longitude lines are actually the same as one another.
For instance, if you start at New Orleans on the 90th meridian W, walk due north, you’ll hit the north pole. If you keep going in a straight line, you’ll now be travelling south along the 90th meridian E and go through Dhaka. Keep going south, past the south pole and now you’ll be going north through New Orleans again.
But even though these two lines are actually two halves of one circle, it makes more sense to us to think of them as different because they describe areas on opposite sides of the world.
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