This is crap, right? (Geographical Trivia Debunked!!)

Factual Questions
1

So earlier today I get a call from my older brother. First he bitches about me taking a shirt from his closet or something and then he says, “I got a question for you. What are the most Southern, Northern, Eastern, and Western US states?”
“Is this a stupid trick question where the answer is Kansas or something since if you go east, you eventually end up west?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “it’s a real question. Just tell me what they are.”

“Ummmm, ok. Let’s see. Maine is eastern. Hawaii is Western and probably southern too, not sure. And Alaska is northern most.”

“WRONG!!”

“Wrong? What, is Florida southernest?”

“Nope! Wanna know the answer?”

“Sure”

“OK, Hawaii is Southernest, and Alaska is Northern, Eastern and Western most state.”

“That’s stupid! You said it wasn’t a trick question.”

“It’s not, wanna know why?”

“Something about the pole maybe?”

“Nope, it’s because Alaska crosses the International Date Line”

“That’s f*cking ridiculous! I could pick any state and call it the S,N,W, and E most state if I wanted! When you go north, you eventually end up going south again, etc. That’s just a stupid answer!! What does the International Date Line have to do with direction!? It’s a stupid trick question!!”

“No, it’s the right answer! It’s trivia!”

“I don’t care what the f*ck it is. It’s stupid!”

“Even scientists say it’s the right answer!”

Ok, so at that awful attempt at a debate I had to hang up. Next he would be telling me that his doctor agrees so he must be right since he has a Doctorate Degree. :rolleyes:

Anyway, so what gives here. Is this just stupid trivia or is it officially accepted that Alaska really is northern, western, and eastern most state? Couldn’t I just as easily give all of those titles to Maine, or Florida or even Nevada if I wanted?

What do you guys think? Does anyone have a better argument for this than “Scientists say it’s true!”? Which scientists? Where is this information published. Who has the official word on such things?

2

This has been gone over before, but in less salty detail.

IOW, Maine is the easternmost state and Alaska the westernmost. You have to consider the U.S. as a whole and not use the way the geographical coordinates are numbered.

However, the USGS goes along with the stupid answer IMO.

3

He’s right. The international dateline is at 180 deg on the map and so it is the line between east and west. Alaska (actually the Aleutian Islands) cross the line, so Alaska is the eastern most and western most state. At >70 deg North, it is also the northernmost state. At <20 deg North Hawaii is the southernmost.

Your objection that you could pick any state only works if you can also change the lines of latitude and longitude, but those are fixed. If you are in Nevada and keep going north, you end up in Idaho, or Oregon I don’t understand how you think you could go North in a state, until you are going south. You can go west in Alaska, until you are in the eastern hemisphere (cross the dateline) and then you are going east, but there are no states at the poles. If you keep going north, you end up in Canada, which isn’t a state.

I would recommend, based mainly on your confusion about this question involving the poles, that you go to a Discovery store and buy yourself a globe.

4

Alaska is the northernmost, obviously, and the westernmost, too, because it extends further west than Hawaii. Hawaii doesn’t extend much past 160 degrees west longitude; Alaska goes to 180 and beyond.

Which explains why your relative can argue that Alaska is the easternmost state as well. Not because Alaska crosses the International Date Line; it doesn’t. It’s because the furthest out of the Aleutians cross the 180th parallel, sort of the geographers’ zero line for measuring east and west: left of the line is east, right of the line is west. Since Alaska’s islands straddle the line, it gets to be both. (The Int. Date Line runs roughly down the 180th parallel, but moves east or west in places so as to keep geographic and political entities–like Alaska–together.)

So, yes, adhering to a strict definition of east, Alaska is the easternmost state. You could argue that Nevada was the easternmost, but there’s no real basis for it; no one considers that 114 degrees west, or whatever that boundary line is, has any meaning for defining directions. The 180 mark is the only one in the US that has that sort of distinction.

As for whether scientists say it’s the right answer, well, he’s full of it. No one really cares, much; scientists have more valuable concerns to occupy their time. Where you draw the east-west line is just a matter of convention.

So you can let your BIL have his fun. If he becomes insufferable, though, try this one on him: About how many people currently live in the state of Pennsylvania? When he gives you the answer, tell him he’s wrong; the correct trivial solution is zero, because PA is a Commonwealth, officially, and not a state. If he yelps “trick question,” just smile.

5

That’s cute, snac! Kentucky works too – it’s also officially a commonwealth, as are, I believe, several others. The BIL would probably be stumped if asked how many counties there are in Louisiana too! (Answer: zero. They’re “parishes.”)

Coincidentally, I was in a local drinking establishment recently, playing an electronic trivia game, and was presented with the same question the original poster bitched about. Alaska was, of course, correct.

Trivia is aptly named, don’t you think?

6

The earlier thread is Easternmost state in which I said

7

One other way to think about it… Say a 24 hr restaraunt has a special that runs from 11:00pm through Midnight and on to 2:00am. Because it spans Midnight, it would be the latest and the earliest special they run. This wouldn’t be true of a lunch special (unless of course, it was the only special they ran).

Hit him with “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
He may guess “Grant” or “Grant and his wife.”
But the groaner answer is “No one is buried in Grant’s Tomb, though Grant and his wife are entombed there.” (I told you it was a groaner).

8

Oh crap. You can also use “What state has the longest name?” - Rhode Island, which is officially “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Viginia and Massachusetts are “Commonwealths”, too. Legally, of course, these are states. Iowa could choose to style itself “The Grand Sultanate of Iowa” if it wanted, but it would still be the same type of entity in terms of its relation to the Federal government.

9

Wrong! You can go west in Alaska until you are in the eastern hemisphere and then you ARE STILL GOING WEST!
I find it ironic that you tell me to go buy a globe but you seem to miss the fact that the earth is round!!!
If you keep going west passed Alaska, yes you end up in the Eastern hemisphere, but you are still going WEST. You will continue to travel west all the way to the east coast of the US!! Maybe you didn’t realize that the fastest route to the FAR EAST from California is to actually travel WEST! :rolleyes:
I’ll give you the North/South one though. If you keep going North, you’ll eventually start going south… but if you keep going, you will be going north again. In this sense, you can get to Alaska from Texas by flying south! (Granted not DIRECTLY SOUTH, but that’s not the issue.)

To the rest of you, thanks! I see now that they are talking about how the states lay on the lat-long grid. But I still believe it’s all about reference. I can fly east from Florida and get to Texas eventually, but that does not make Texas east of Florida… or does it!?

BTW, Stephen, what animal are the Canary Islands named after? :smiley:

10

I agree with you Bear_Nenno. “East” and “west” are relative terms, and any attempt to fix an eastern and western hemisphere is arbitrary. While the choice of which hemisphere is “north” and which is “south” is also arbitrary, there is a physical basis for the distinction. Using the logic your brother uses, Greenwich is both the eastern-most and western-most point in England.

11

OUCH! Did I say that? The ravages of a low grade Budweiser hangover. Well, I guess there’s one for the recently departed president of the Flat-Earthers

12

Isn’t that the point of a riddle? I mean, if the answer were “Alaska, Maine, Hawaii and Florida” it wouldn’t be a riddle.

13

The direction you are traveling hasn’t got anything to do with where you are located. If you were in Florida and drove north into South Carolina, you would not say you were in the northern part of a state that was incorrectly named. You would be in the southern part of a state that was named because of its relative position to another state. Have you ever heard of the “Western Hemisphere” or the “Eastern Hemisphere”? If you are traveling east from France you would be in the eastern hemisphere until you got to the International Date Line. When you crossed the line you would be in the western hemisphere and what direction you were going would not change that fact. For those that say everything is relative, you are exactly right. They are relative to accepted and established facts. There is a reason(s) for the International Date Line. One of the least important being to keep people from arguing over where does east stop and west begin. The answer is Hawaii, Alaska, Alaska, and Alaska.

14

Look, let’s pretend that you’re standing right next to the line, and I’m on the other side of it from you. If you are in the eastern hemisphere and I’m in the western hemisphere, you would not describe my position as a being a few thousand miles due west of you. Rather, you would think of me as three feet east of you. To get to me, you would not go west, but east.

It is similarly ridiculous to consider a point at which the US continues to extend to the east as being the easternmost point. That would require defining easternmost to be something counter-intuitive and useless. Something that is “easternmost” is the thing from where you cannot go further east, not the thing with the highest longitude.

15

I think your brother’s being annoying. Since East and West continue forever, there isn’t a good useful commonly understood definition of Easternmost and Westernmost. I think the definition you applied is more commonly understood and usually more useful than the one he applied. Riddles that depend on inconsistency of definitions or on one’s choice of the common definition rather than an obscure definition are a pox on riddles in general. If a roomful of scientists suddenly appeared while he told the answer to this riddle, I predict most of them would be annoyed too.

16

Kipling never visited the International Date Line.

17

There is no one answer to the trivia quesiton posted. The issue depends upon the definition of the terms being used. If ‘easternmost’ is meant to mean ‘the point in the United States with the most positive longitude co-ordinate based upon the system that sets 0 as the longitude running through Greenwich, England (where longitudes west of Greenwich are assigned negative values)’, the answer becomes Alaska. If ‘easternmost’ means ‘the point in the United States furthest east from the longitude that runs through the geographical center of the country, without having traversed more than 180 degrees of longitude in the process’, the answer becomes Maine. One can, of course, make up one’s own system for nomenclature.

To comprehend fully, ask yourself: are we East or West of Japan?

18

So, that’s why those Trans-Pacific flights take so long. The plane keeps changing directions.

19

I believe the answer to that one is dogs.

20

Just to throw yet another monkey wrench into the works: Suppose you have a political entity which pretty much spans the globe, such as the old British Empire (upon which the Sun never sets). How do you define “easternmost” and “westernmost” now? The “Maine-Alaska” answer, where you spread the thing out on a map and then look at it, won’t work here, because there’s several different ways, equally valid, of spreading the British Empire out onto a map. If you want any answer to the question (and I don’t see why you would even want an answer) in that case, you’ll have to go with the meridian answer.