Peter Anderson, age 12, of Rochesterp N.Y. for his question:
Where do east and west meet?
East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet. Or so said a poet not too long ago. He meant that the peoples of the Orient and the Western World could never meet and understand each other. But a new era began in the 20th century. People of the Eastern and Western worlds are at least trying to meet and understand each other.
As far as our old earth is concerned there is no east arid west. There is north and south because the globe spins on its axis. The north and south poles mark the two ends of the axis. One half of the globe is the Southern Hemisphere the other the Northern Hemisphere. The dividing line is exactly half way between the two poles. It is the large waist of the world ‑the equator.
A trip around the equator is a circle. And who can say where a circle begins or which half is east and west? The globe itself gives us no help, as it does with the north and south directions. So, when the geographers planned to divide the world into Eastern and Western Hemispheres, they had to choose and decide upon a dividing line.
Their job was to divide the entire globe into sections. much as a city is divided into blocks by streets and avenues. They used the lines of latitude and longitude.
The lines of latitude run from side to side of a map, parallel with the equator. Latitude 0 degrees is the equator. North of the equator they read 1, 2 degrees north way up to 90 degrees north, which is the North Pole. South of the equator they read 1, 2, 3 degrees south way down to 90 degrees south, which is the South Pole.
The lines of longitude run up and down on the map. Each is a huge circle hooping around the world through the poles. There are 180 of these circles, just as there are 180 degrees of latitude. The lines of longitude all meet at the poles and fan out wide apart at the equator.
Now to divide the world into Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Each great circle of longitude, or meridian, must be half in the eastern and half in the western world. One meridian has the job of dividing the two halves.
The geographers decided to make this Prime Meridian the one which runs through Greenwich, England. It runs north through polar seas to the North Pole. It runs south through France, Spain, Africa and southern seas to the South Pole. The longitudes read 1, 2, 3 east or west of this line.
At the North Pole the Prime Meridian hoops down the other side of the globe. This half is longitude 180 degrees, the International Date Line. The great circle around the globe through the poles slices it into an Eastern and Western Hemisphere. This is where east meets west.
Suppose you traveled westward around the world from England. You would cross longitudes 1, 2, 3 degrees west. After longitude 180 degrees you would cross 179, 178 degrees east. Finally you would cross 1 degree east and reach the Prime Meridian again.