Jun. 3, 2007 - Homeschool Moment: The Great Circle Route

Tonight over supper we were talking about the flight our eldest son is taking today to Asia. We first looked at the flat world map on our kitchen table (I covered it with roll plastic bought at Wal-Mart and we've got a US one on there, too - we have a big table!). It looked pretty obvious that his plane would travel right across America and the Pacific to Asia. Not so, Grasshopper! I asked one of the children to run go get the globe. If you hold a piece of string between where you are and where you are going in Asia and try to get the string as short as possible, you will be surprised at the actual route. It is much closer to travel north to go west to Asia from the U.S. East coast! It's called the Great Circle Route! Check out this Great Circle Mapper. It looks confusing, but just type in two airport codes (you can look them up on the same page and map! For example, if you type in "JFK-NRT" (JFK, New York to Narita, Tokyo, Japan) and press "Display Map" it is amazing! You may not recognize the continents at first because you are looking down at the North Pole!

BTW, we'd sure appreciate prayer for Number One Son! He has just a little more than an hour to make it through one of the busiest, most confusing airports in the world to make his connection and his plane is running a little late!