Can you find an instance of more than eight states being on the same longitude?
What’s the longest Interstate highway?
Which state capital has the lowest altitude?
How many state capitals share the same latitude or longitude with at least one other capital?
I’ve only got a couple of minutes, Zeldar, so I’m not even going to consider #4:
[ol]
[li]Can you find an instance of more than eight states being on the same longitude? Looks like anywhere around Longitude 82.2 deg. W. will pass through ten states (MI, OH, WV, KY, VA, TN, NC, SC, GA, and FL) – plus Ontario, Canada.[/li][li]What’s the longest Interstate highway? I-90, from Seattle to Boston.[/li][li]Which state capital has the lowest altitude? Several state capitals include sea level within the city limits, but I’m going to nominate Honolulu because the State Capitol is a low building (~100 ft tall) in downtown, not a domed structure on a hill like in Boston, Providence, etc. Google Earth puts the Hawai’i State Capitol at 20ft above sea level, so I’m going with that.[/li][li]How many state capitals share the same latitude or longitude with at least one other capital? (No answer due to lack of time!)[/li][/ol]
Nicely done, and hard to believe at first. I found this MapQuest site that lets you enter latitudes and longitudes and fiddled around with -82.42 longitude and random latitiudes until I was able to verify that that longitude passes very close to:
Port Huron MI
Newark OH
Lavalette WV
Kimper KY
Clintwood VA
Johnson City TN
Dillingham NC
Travelers Rest SC
Leathersville GA
Olustee FL
Lacking such a reference, I had just eyeballed various outline maps of the US and had decided that the winning longitude would have been further east, and therefore touching fewer states.
It’s a bit interesting that the -82.42 line approximates the dividing lines for those early colonies/states that were split off to form new states once the Appalachian barrier had been breached: VA into WV and KY; NC into TN.
Having found what appears to be the longitude (more or less) that maximizes states crossed, it will be a fun exercise to locate the latitude that does that same sort of thing.
Who will be first to find it?
Here’s one to beat: 41.9
It appears to cross, east to west:
MA
RI
CT
NY
PA
OH
MI
IL
IA
NE
WY
UT
NV
CA
If that’s really the case, then the intersection of -82.42 and 41.9, which is in Lake Erie and in Ontario’s waters, would be the place to be to maximize the number of states both north-south and east-west that could be traveled to.