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Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:10:00 -0700
From: Ken Rockwell <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: langitude and lontitude
Sender: Ken Rockwell <[log in to unmask]>



Nat Case wrote:
> My big problem in this case is with the names latitude and longitude,
> neither of which is especially expressive of the meaning (and any
> obvious mnemonics get misleading... which way is "long"?). I know its
> not quite the same, but the nautical terms "northing" and "westing"
> make a lot more sense to me.
>
> I went to the dictionary just now to check and latitude comes from
> Latin for "breadth," and longitude comes from "length." Not helpful
> to me, as neither really involves direction.

One could think of it this way: as Latitude has to do with breadth,
remember which lines are of varying length: the east-west running
ones, which shorten as you approach the poles.  But longitudes are
always LONG, i.e. the same length (minus variation in the shape of
our oblate spheroid.

Regarding scale:
> Another geographical designation that always confuses me is
> small-scale and large-scale: small-scale maps show larger areas in a
> smaller frame. They have a smaller scale if you think of scale as a
> rational number (1/X), but in the rational scale the "other number"
> (1:X) is larger.

        Way back in the cartography class I took in undergraduate
college, the instructor told us all a simple pnemonic for
remembering:  "Large scale: man's large."  Or, to sound less
sexist, I tell my patrons, "Large scale, the features are large."
Things show up larger on a large-scale map, including people if
they were portrayed.

--Ken Rockwell
University of Utah

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