Absolute vs. Relative Location
What type of location tells exactly where a place is by using a street address or coordinates?
Absolute Location
What imaginary line divides Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?
The Equator.
What is a hemisphere?
One half of Earth.
What is a coordinate grid used to find?
The location of a place on a map.
What is climate?
The average weather conditions of a place over a long period of time.
If someone says, “The library is across from the supermarket,” are they describing absolute location or relative location?
What do horizontal lines of latitude show?
They show how far north or south a place is from the Equator.
In which hemisphere is land located south of the Equator?
The Southern Hemisphere.
What two kinds of lines form a coordinate grid?
Lines of latitude and longitude
Which climate zone is usually hot, wet, and humid and is often found near the Equator?
Tropical climate.
Why are coordinates useful for finding an unfamiliar place?
Coordinates give a place’s exact, or absolute location.
What are lines of longitude also called?
Meridians
Why is Earth divided into time zones?
Earth rotates on its axis, so different places experience different times of day.
What kind of grid uses one letter and one number to identify a location?
An alphanumeric grid.
Name the five climate zones described in the reading.
Tropical, dry, temperate, continental, and polar.
Which description is a relative location: “near the Atlantic Ocean” or “at a specific latitude and longitude”?
“Near the Atlantic Ocean.”
What imaginary line divides Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres?
The Prime Meridian
What is Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, used for?
It is the starting point for measuring time zones at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich.
When using an alphanumeric grid to find a location like H, 12, what do the letter and number represent?
The letter represents the row and the number represents the column on the grid.
What is a climatologist?
A person who studies and observes climate over a long period of time and makes predictions about future climate patterns.
Explain how latitude and longitude work together to identify a place’s absolute location.
Latitude shows how far north or south a place is from the Equator, and longitude shows how far east or west it is from the Prime Meridian. Together, they pinpoint the place’s exact location.
A map shows red lines running from the North Pole to the South Pole. What do these lines represent, and what do they measure?
They represent longitude, or meridians, and measure how far east or west a place is from the Prime Meridian.
What is the International Date Line, and where is it located in relation to the Prime Meridian?
It is an imaginary line that marks the boundary between one day and the next. It is located halfway around the world from the Prime Meridian.
Explain the difference between a coordinate grid and an alphanumeric grid.
A coordinate grid uses lines of latitude and longitude (measured in degrees) to locate places, while an alphanumeric grid uses letters and numbers to identify squares on a map.
Why can South America have both dry desert climates and wet tropical climates?
South America covers a wide range of latitudes and landforms. Areas near the Equator usually receive more direct sunlight and rainfall, creating tropical climates, while other areas receive less rainfall or are farther from the Equator, creating dry or colder climates.