Journey North International Plant Study

Try This! Find Fairfield

Attention geographic detectives! Here's a challenge for you. Can you find a garden located at 36.37 North latitude and 88.35 West longitude. Let's get started--

All tulip gardens can be found by locating their global address.

Global Adress

Every location on earth has a "global address." This address doesn't use words, it only uses numbers (called coordinates). These numbers tell us where to find a specific location using a grid line system, like the lines on graph paper.

When you place the gridlines on a globe like the Earth they don't look exactly the same as our example. How are they different? What do we call the gridlines on a globe?

Finding Fairfield
Can you locate the Fairfield, IL, tulip garden on the map (36.37, -88.35)? We zoomed in to help you! Grab an atlas to help you identify the major grid lines on our map. Click on the map and try your geography skills. Don't peek until you do the steps outlined below:

Click to view large map for study

Study the close-up map.
(Print or project the map image.)
Locate and label the latitude and longitude lines on the map.
Discuss how the latitude and longitude change as you move across the map.
Locate the global address (36.37, -88.35).
hint: go south of 40 N, and east of 90W

Want to try again?
Grab a partner and use the live Journey North MapServer to play Geography Detective. Find the coordinates using the information button . Take turns locating gardens in the Tulip garden experiment.