The beautiful and almost perfectly cone-shaped structure of Mt. Fuji that we see today was formed after three generations of volcanic activity—the Mt. Ashitaka and Komitake volcanoes that are believed to have become extinct more than 100,000 years ago; the Older Fuji Volcano that is thought to be have been active up until about 10,000 years ago; and the Younger Fuji Volcano that started erupting about 10,000 years ago.There are several theories regarding the origin of the name Mt. Fuji.
Some assumptions are that it was derived from the Japanese word fuji-yama meaning a mountain “second to no other” in height; or from fujin-yama meaning “a mountain that surpasses all others in size”; or from funchi in the Ainu (an ethnic group indigenous to Northern Japan) language meaning “the god of fire” or a “volcano.” Another explanation traces the origin of the name to the Japanese folk tale The Moon Princess, in which the moon princess leaves the old couple that brought her up on Earth and returns to the moon.
When the heartbroken old man burnt the elixir she had left behind on the slopes of the mountain, he noticed smoke rising out from the top of the mountain.Thus the mountain came to be called Mt. Fuji, from the Japanese word for immortality, fushi
Geography
Geography, Mount fuj
Latitude
Imagine the Earth was a transparent sphere (actually the shape is slightly oval; because of the Earth’s rotation, its equator bulges out a little). Through the transparent Earth (drawing) we can see its equatorial plane, and its middle the point is O, the center of the Earth.
To specify the latitude of some point P on the surface, draw the radius OP to that point. Then the elevation angle of that point above the equator is its latitude λ–northern latitude if north of the equator, southern (or negative) latitude if south of it.
[How can one define the angle between a line and a plane, you may well ask? After all, angles are usually measured between two lines!
Good question. We must use the angle which completes it to 90 degrees, the one between the given line and one perpendicular to the plane. Here that would be the angle (90°-λ) between OP and the Earth's axis, known as the co-latitude of P.]
Lines of latitude
On a globe of the Earth, lines of latitude are circles of different size. The longest is the equator, whose latitude is zero, while at the poles–at latitudes 90° north and 90° south (or -90°) the circles shrink to a point.
Geography
Geography, latitude
Longitude
On the globe, lines of constant longitude (“meridians”) extend from pole to pole, like the segment boundaries on a peeled orange.
Every meridian must cross the equator. Since the equator is a circle, we can divide it–like any circle–into 360 degrees, and the longitude φ of a point is then the marked value of that division where its meridian meets the equator.
What that value is depends of course on where we begin to count–on where zero longitude is. For historical reasons, the meridian passing the old Royal Astronomical Observatory in Greenwich, England, is the one chosen as zero longitude. Located at the eastern edge of London, the British capital, the observatory is now a public museum and a brass band stretching across its yard marks the “prime meridian.” Tourists often get photographed as they straddle it–one foot in the eastern hemisphere of the Earth, the other in the western hemisphere.
A lines of longitude is also called a meridian, derived from the Latin, from meri, a variation of “medius” which denotes “middle”, and diem, meaning “day.” The word once meant “noon”, and times of the day before noon were known as “ante meridian”, while times after it were “post meridian.” Today’s abbreviations a.m. and p.m. come from these terms, and the Sun at noon was said to be “passing meridian”. All points on the same line of longitude experienced noon (and any other hour) at the same time and were therefore said to be on the same “meridian line”, which became “meridian” for short.
Geography
Geography, longitude