Which comes first, latitude or longitude?

Latitude. It is the convention everywhere and it is worth saying out loud every time: 40 degrees north, 20 degrees east. The panel puts them in that order and the line under the map reads them in that order.

What is the difference between latitude and longitude?

Latitude is how far north or south of the equator you are, and the lines run across the map. Longitude is how far east or west of the Prime Meridian, and its lines run from pole to pole. The two together name one point on the whole planet.

Why does the pin stop at eighty degrees?

Because this map squeezes the last ten degrees into a few units of board, and a pin on the pole itself sits where every line of longitude meets, which is a different lesson. The poles and the hemispheres want a globe rather than a flat map.

Why does it say the ocean rather than the sea?

Because the five oceans have agreed boundaries a board can draw and the seas inside them do not: where the Atlantic becomes the Mediterranean is a convention. It says the ocean it can be sure of rather than guessing at the sea.

Latitude and Longitude

Geography · Year 4–Year 6

Move the pin, read the pair, and the board says what is there.

About the lat and long

A pin on the world, moved north, south, east and west in ten degree steps. The panel says the latitude and the longitude with their names on, the line under the map says the pair as a class would read it out, and then it says what the pin is standing on: a continent, or one of the five oceans.

The grid is drawn every ten degrees and the pin moves in tens, so it always lands where two lines cross. That is what makes "find where thirty north crosses twenty east" a question with two presses rather than a hunt, and it is why the pin cannot be dragged: dropped by hand it would land at thirty-seven degrees and something, and a board that reads out a number it cannot draw a line for is inventing precision.

Nought degrees has no letter after it, and the board is careful about that: the equator is neither north nor south, and the Prime Meridian is neither east nor west. It is the mistake a class makes once they have learned to always write N or S.

Longitude wraps. Keep pressing east and the pin comes back on the other side of the map, because the world is a ball and a map is a cut in it. Latitude does not: it stops at eighty, where the map has pinched the parallels together.

What the pin is on comes off the coastline the map is drawn from, so the answer cannot disagree with the picture. The oceans are the conventional teaching boundaries rather than real coastlines, because where the Atlantic stops being the Atlantic is an agreement rather than a place: it can tell you the Atlantic and it cannot tell you the Mediterranean.

How to use it on your whiteboard

1Press North, South, East or West to move the pin ten degrees.
2Read the latitude and the longitude off the panel, latitude first.
3The line under the map says the pair, and what the pin is standing on.
4Ask the class for a pair and see who can get there in the fewest presses.
5Press Start again to put the pin back on the equator.

Questions

Which comes first, latitude or longitude?: Latitude. It is the convention everywhere and it is worth saying out loud every time: 40 degrees north, 20 degrees east. The panel puts them in that order and the line under the map reads them in that order.
What is the difference between latitude and longitude?: Latitude is how far north or south of the equator you are, and the lines run across the map. Longitude is how far east or west of the Prime Meridian, and its lines run from pole to pole. The two together name one point on the whole planet.
Why does the pin stop at eighty degrees?: Because this map squeezes the last ten degrees into a few units of board, and a pin on the pole itself sits where every line of longitude meets, which is a different lesson. The poles and the hemispheres want a globe rather than a flat map.
Why does it say the ocean rather than the sea?: Because the five oceans have agreed boundaries a board can draw and the seas inside them do not: where the Atlantic becomes the Mediterranean is a convention. It says the ocean it can be sure of rather than guessing at the sea.