Latitude and Longitude Pinpoint Absolute Location

Imagine you are a ship navigator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are no road signs, no landmarks — just water in every direction. How do you tell someone exactly where you are? Geographers solve this problem with a global grid made of two sets of invisible lines wrapped around Earth. Together, these lines create a system of absolute location — a unique coordinate address for every single point on the planet. The first set of lines runs east-west and are called lines of latitude, or parallels. They measure how far north or south a place is from the equator, which sits exactly halfway between the North and South Poles at 0 degrees. Latitude values range from 0° at the equator to 90° N at the North Pole and 90° S at the South Pole. Think of latitude lines like the rungs of a ladder — they stay parallel and never cross. The second set of lines runs north-south and are called lines of longitude, or meridians. They measure how far east or west a place is from the prime meridian, a line that passes through Greenwich, England, at 0 degrees. Longitude values range from 0° to 180° east and 0° to 180° west, meeting at the opposite side of Earth. When you combine one latitude value and one longitude value, you get a coordinate pair written like this: 40° N, 74° W. That specific pair points to one location — New York City — and nowhere else on Earth. That is the power of the grid: precision. Here is the hint that keeps it straight: latitude is the flat-t lines (horizontal), longitude is the long lines (they run the full length of the globe from pole to pole).