Is longitude lines parallel

Answer 1

Short answer #1: Although longitude lines are drawn parallel on most world maps, they are not parallel on a globe, which is the most accurate model of Earth.

Short answer #2: It's just a convention, like electrons being considered negative and protons considered positive (or the QWERTY keyboard layout vs. Dvorak). They could have sliced the Earth vertically the same way they sliced it horizontally--with smaller circles toward the Asia and the US instead of toward the poles--but perhaps they couldn't decide where the absolute East and West are as easily as they could decide on North and South. [That's just speculation.]

Long version of answer #1: Most world maps are Mercator/cylindrical projections, which distort the sizes of continents and bodies of water more and more toward the north and south poles, making Antarctica and Greenland look way bigger than they should (as compared to the other continents).

It's like taking the peel off of an orange and flattening it out on a table--you'll have to rip the peel to do it--and then filling in all of the empty spaces with an orange marker so that it fits a rectangular shape. All of the orange ink is distortion. You wouldn't want to use a rectangular shape like that to describe an orange to someone who's never seen one before, but I guess you could if you had to. Always remember that when you're looking at a world map.

There are alternatives to the Mercator projection that preserve the relative sizes of the continents and bodies of water, but every flat drawing of Earth is distorted in some way, which is probably why they still use the Mercator projection so much--it's not easy to convince someone that one projection is better than another. [more speculation]

Answer 2

That's right. All meridians of longitude meet at the north and south poles.

When you see a globe with a fair number of meridians printed on it, it looks

like an orange before you take it apart and pass sections around.

Answer 3

No. Meridians of longitude all meet at the north and south poles.

'Lines' of latitude never meet or cross, and they're often called 'parallels' of latitude.

Answer 4

Because the Earth is a globe.