Why are the lines of latitdue and longitude important?

Answer 1

The lines aren't important at all. The latitude, however, is critical, because it's one

of the two numbers that are absolutely essential in order to describe the location of

a point on the Earth's surface. The other essential number is the point's longitude.

Answer 2

Well, imagine for a moment that you're the captain of a cruise ship at sea, and either your fuel tanks

have run dry, or all of your engines just quit for some unknown reason. There you are, bobbing like

a cork somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship is running low on champagne and

toilet paper, the novelty and sense of adventure have worn off, and the passengers are after you to

do something. You're in constant radio contact with the British Navy and the US Coast Guard, and they're

ready to come out and pick you up, but you have this one little problem ... you have no way to tell them

where you are ! All you know is that you're somewhere between New York and London in the north Atlantic.

But the north Atlantic is an awfully big place ... you really don't have a feeling for how big it is unless you've

been there ... and there's absolutely no chance that anybody can ever find you, unless you can pin your

location down for them, to something that's at least correct within 30 or 40 miles ... one mile would be

even better.

Or let's make it a lot less dramatic: You were out sailing in Lake Michigan off the Chicago waterfront

on a Sunday afternoon, you accidentally dropped your family-heirloom beer cooler over the side, and

you want to go back to the same spot with a salvage diver who can bring it back up for you.

Or you're an industrial crab fisherman in the waters off Alaska. The way you do that is, you drop

hundreds of "pots" into the sea over an area of hundreds of square miles, you wait a while, and

then you go back, find each one, pull it up, and take out the crabs.

In each case, your chances are a whole lot better if you can describe a location, well enough

so that you or someone else can go straight to the right spot.

If there are roads, houses, fences, trees, gas stations, brick walls, creeks, or rocks there,

then you might be able to describe the place. But what if there aren't any of those ... like on

the water ?

Latitude and longitude are used to point to exactly where you want to be, within a few inches,

anywhere on the surface of the earth.

Answer 3

The lines are not important at all. But the latitude and longitude numbers of a place are

important because they're the address of the place. They're the numbers that people in

that place use to tell other people where they are and how to get there, and they're the

numbers that people who are not there use in order to find the place.

Answer 4

The lines of latitude and longitude are important because we need them to describe exactly where a point is on Earth.

Answer 5

Because it helps pin point areas better on a map. Loser