Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Latitude & Longitude Finder
Drag the globe to spin it, then tap anywhere to drop a pin — the readout shows that spot's latitude and longitude in degrees and minutes. Move both pins to trace the shortest path over the curved Earth, the great-circle route, and read its distance in kilometres.
Labs / Geography / Latitude & Longitude Finder
Latitude & Longitude Finder
Drag the globe to spin it, then tap anywhere to drop a pin — the readout shows that spot's latitude and longitude in degrees and minutes. Move both pins to trace the shortest path over the curved Earth, the great-circle route, and read its distance in kilometres.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
A —B —Distance —
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- Where do latitude and longitude both read zero, and what is out there in the ocean at that exact spot?
- Slide a pin straight up a meridian toward the pole — why do the minutes of longitude start to matter less as you climb?
- Put one pin near New York and the other near Tokyo. Why does the shortest line arc up over the Arctic instead of running flat across?
- Switch to the flat map. What does it do to the apparent size of Greenland and Antarctica compared with the globe?
- Turn on the tropics. Between which two latitudes can the Sun ever be directly overhead at noon?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.