Geography Study Materials and Hand-outs

A particular place or position. "the property is set in a convenient location" In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth’s surface or elsewhere. The term location generally implies a higher degree of certainty than place, the latter often indicating an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying mor  on human or social attributes of place identity and sense of place than on geometry. location is the place where a particular point or object exists. Location is an important term in geography, and is usually considered more precise than "place." A locality is a human settlement: city, town, village, or even archaeological site. A place's absolute location is its exact place on Earth, often given in terms of latitude and longitude. For example, the Empire State Building is located at 40.7 degrees north (latitude), 74 degrees west (longitude). It sits at the intersection of 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City...

Perihelion and Aphelion According to Kepler's first law of planetary motion, all planets, comets, and asteroids in the Solar System have approximately elliptical orbits around the Sun. Hence, an orbiting body has a closest and a farthest point from its parent object, that is, a perihelion and an aphelion, known collectively as apsides. Orbital eccentricity measures the flatness (departure from a perfect circle) of the orbit. Perihelion The word "perihelion" stems from the Ancient Greek words "peri", meaning "near", and "helios", meaning "the Sun". The perihelion is the point in the orbit of a planet, minor planet, or comet, where it is nearest to its orbital focus, generally a star.   Aphelion "Aphelion" derives from the preposition "apo", meaning "away, off, apart". (The similar words "perigee" and "apogee" refer to the nearest and furthest points in some object's orbit around t...

  Earth's Size The size of Earth, like the size of all of the celestial bodies, is measured in a number of parameters including mass, volume, density; surface area, mean diameter, and circumference . Earth's Shape Earth's circumference and diameter differ because its shape is classified as an oblate spheroid or ellipsoid, instead of a true sphere. This means that instead of being of equal circumference in all areas, the poles are squished, resulting in a bulge at the equator, and thus a larger circumference and diameter there. The equatorial bulge at Earth's equator is measured at 26.5 miles (42.72 km) and is caused by the planet's rotation and gravity. Gravity itself causes planets and other celestial bodies to contract and form a sphere. This is because it pulls all the mass of an object as close to the center of gravity (the Earth's core in this case) as possible. Because Earth rotates, this sphere is distorted by the centrifugal force. This is the fo...