Expert: Ed - 11/1/2004

Question
Ed, I need to know what the latitude and longitude of a point on Earth that is opposite Tokyo(36 degrees north and 140 east).  Thank you  

Answer
Mary,
To calculate this, you would simply flip-flop the latitude measurement (in this case, make north into south), and rotate your longitude measurement by 180 degrees.  That would mean that the antipode of Tokyo would be 36 degrees SOUTH latitude, and 40 degrees WEST longitude.  This is located down in the south Atlantic, about halfway between Brzil and an island called South Georgia.  Here is a map to help you visualize this.  I recommend that you fool around with the map coordinates, because A.) it's really fun, and B.) it will help you get a feel for this.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=degrees&latdeg=-36&latmin=00&la...

I hope this is helpful.  Keep Looking Up!
--Ed