Carolyn Anne Knight, age 11, of Kershaw, S.C., for her question:

What is the latitude of the equator?

The line of latitude which is the equator is exactly half way between the two poles. It divides the earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, which are two equal half spheres. The lines of latitude north and south of the equator divide the earth into parallel slices.  call them parallels because the lines are parallel to each other. There are 180 of them and they ere all the same distance apart, each one running clear around the globe.

One way to number the lines of latitude would be to start with the north pole and count up to 180 down to the south pole. This way did not seem sensible to the geographers. They decided to begin the numbering at the equator and then count north into the northern hemisphere and south into the southern hemisphere. The equator, then, is latitude 0 degrees. Some 69 miles south of the equator is latitude 1 degrees south and some 69 miles north of the equator is latitude 1 degrees north. The latitudes, or parallels march north and south to the poles. There are an equal number of latitudes north and south of the equator. The North Pole is latitude _ degrees north and the south pole is latitude 90 degrees south. The equator is just plain latitude 0 degrees.