Latitude and Longitude for Dummy Grade-Schoolers

Latitude-longitude grid  

According to the old saying, half a loaf is better than none. We agree that, if you're hungry, half a loaf is indeed better than none – unless you're hungry for knowledge or information, because in that case half an answer just leaves you with more questions. At least we think so... which makes us wonder whether "veteran home-school educator" Kathryn Hatter would feel that her students were well-served with the half-answer she offered in her Sciencing.com post, "How to Understand Latitude and Longitude."

Actually, we're not so sure Hatter even provided half an answer. That's because Kathryn used a globe as her sole information source for the post, which may be why she ended up telling anyone unlucky enough to read this tripe that,

"Each latitude line that runs parallel to the equator (either north or south of the equator) has a degree number assigned to it. The first line north of the equator is +15 degrees north. The first line south of the equator is -15 degrees south. As the latitude lines get further away (both north and south) from the equator, the degree numbers get bigger until the final northern latitude line of +90 (the North Pole) and the final southern latitude line of -90 (the South Pole)."

Yikes! she really did say that there is a 90-degree latitude line on the globe... but that wasn't her most glaring error! No, she actually suggested to her readers that there is no "latitude line" between the equator and 15 degrees north or south. And, as one might expect, she said something equally foolish about longitude: "The lines of longitude measure either east or west from the 0-degree line of longitude (the Prime Meridian). The first line west of the Prime Meridian is -15 degrees west. The first line east of the Prime Meridian is +15 degrees east. "

The inanity of all that fifteen-degree business notwithstanding, not to mention that her "-15 degrees west" is redundant¹, Hatter did her readers a great disservice by failing to mention any but the most basic facts about latitude and longitude – they measure, respectively, distance north-south from the equator and east-west from an arbitrary prime meridian (Greenwich).

Kathryn failed to mention that lines of longitude converge at the poles, or that those lines on a globe she so carefully describes are mere constructs used to make location easier. She didn't mention minutes or seconds of latitude-longitude, fails to equate seconds with nautical miles, and only briefly mentioned location by decimal degrees.
In short, Hatter's "How to Understand..." article would probably earn a grade of "D" from a fourth-grade teacher – just like it earned a Dumbass of the Day award from us.

¹ It's redundant because negative longitudes are, by convention, west longitudes; just as negative latitudes are south latitudes.

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