Grids

Today in class we talked about grids and time zones. We learned yet another answer to the question "How do geographers describe where things are?" A map is a two-dimensional flat-scale model of the Earth's surface. We learned that absolute location is a position expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude. We also learned that relative location is the position of a place relative to the position of other places. Absolute and relative location are one purpose of maps. A second purpose is to convey the distribution of human activities of physical features. We talked about what degrees, minutes, and seconds are and talked about what that looks like on the actual Earth's surface. Lastly we learned about what latitude is. Latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the Earth's surface. Today was a good class and I learned a lot.