Lines of Latitude and Longitude

Year 7 lesson on using lines of latitude and longitude to find places in the world

1. Latitude and
Longitude
Learning Objectives:
•To understand what longitude and latitude
are and how they are useful to us.
•To be able to use them to locate areas on a
world map.
•To know the names of some major lines on
the world map.

2. A system of lines is used to find the location of any
place on the surface of the Earth.
Lines of latitudelatitude run in an east-west direction. Lines of
longitudelongitude run in a north-south direction.
Latitude and longitudeLatitude and longitude

3. LatitudeLatitude
Latitude (shown as a horizontal line) is measured in
degrees north or degrees south of the equator, which
is the line around the exact middle of the earth.
Lines of latitude are often referred to as parallelsparallels..

4. North Pole
Equator
South Pole
LatitudeLatitude

5. LongitudeLongitude
Longitude (shown as a vertical line) is measured in
degrees east or west of something called the Prime
Meridian. This is the line going from the North Pole to
the South Pole and running through the middle of the
Greenwich Observatory in London.
Lines of longitude are often referred to as meridians.

6. International Date
Line at 180
o
Greenwich Meridian
LongitudeLongitude

7. Your task
Use your atlas pages 114-5 or page 43 to find
the following lines of longitude and latitude
and mark them on your map outline:
•Tropic of Cancer
•Tropic of Capricorn
•Equator
•Arctic Circle
•Antarctic Circle
•Greenwich (Prime) Meridian

8. The latitude of ‘a’ is 20ºS…’a’ is 20º south of the Equator.
The longitude of ‘a’ is 20ºW…’a’ is 20º west of the Greenwich
Meridian.
Therefore we write the latitude and longitude of ‘a’ as 20ºS 20ºW.
ALWAYS
write these
first
These are lines of longitude
a
N
These are lines
of latitude
How to use Latitude and longitudeHow to use Latitude and longitude

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10. These are lines of latitude
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