Ken Jennings - Maps and Geography

KEN JENNINGS grew up in Seoul, South Korea, where he became a daily devotee of the quiz show Jeopardy! In 2004, he successfully auditioned for a spot on the show, and went on an unprecedented seventy-four-game victory streak worth $2.52 million. Jennings book Brainiac, about his Jeopardy! adventures, was a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, as were his follow-up books, Maphead and Because I Said So! Jennings lives outside Seattle with his wife, Mindy; his son, Dylan; his daughter, Caitlin; and a deeply unstable Labrador retriever named Banjo. Visit Ken on the Web at ken-jennings.com.

MIKE LOWERY is an illustrator and fine artist whose work has been seen in galleries and publications internationally. Mike is the illustrator of Moo Hoo and Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan; The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray; and the Doctor Proctors Fart Powder novels by Jo Nesbo. Currently he is a professor of illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with a lovely German frau, Katrin, and his supergenius daughter, Allister. You can visit him on the Web at MikeLowery.com.

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Little Simon

Simon & Schuster New York

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Text copyright 2014 by Ken Jennings

Illustrations copyright 2014 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Jacket design by Elizabeth Doyle

Jacket illustration by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

LITTLE SIMON is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jennings, Ken, 1974

Maps and geography / by Ken Jennings ; illustrated by Mike Lowery. First Edition.

pages cm. (Ken Jennings Junior Genius Guides)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4424-9848-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4424-7328-7 (pbk : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4424-7329-4 (ebook) 1. GeographyJuvenile literature. 2. MapsJuvenile literature. I. Lowery, Mike, 1980- illustrator. II. Title.

G133.J47 2014

910dc23

2012050862

All right, class, thats the bell. Everyone please find your seats and quiet down.

Im Professor Jennings, and Ill be teaching todays class on maps and geography. You could probably tell Im the teacher because Im a lot taller than you, and I have a big desk with a nameplate that says PROFESSOR JENNINGS . Also Im wearing a graduation hat and gown and holding a globe and I have a huge head crammed full of knowledge. Junior Geniuses: Im here to share some of that knowledge with you.

But let me remind you that being a Junior Genius has nothing to do with the size of your noggin or the thickness of your glasses or even the grades on your report card. Its a state of mind. Junior Geniuses are interested in the world around them and excited to learn all they can about itespecially the cool, weird stuff. As the Junior Genius motto reminds us: Semper quaerens . Thats Latin for Always curious.

Please rise, put your right index finger to your temple, and face this drawing of Albert Einstein. We will now say the Junior Genius Pledge.

With all my fellow Junior Geniuses, I solemnly pledge to quest after questions, to angle for answers, to seek out, and to soak up. I will hunger and thirst for knowledge my whole life through, and I dedicate my discoveries to all humankind, with trivia not for just us but for all.

Very good. You may be seated!

Geography comes from the Greek word for description of the Earth. Geo- means Earth, like in geology. The -graphy part means to write, like in graphic or biography. So geographers study and describe the Earth.

This is the Earth. It is our home, unless any of you are aliens who have secretly invaded our planet for your own purposes. If so, please see me after class.

You might have heard or read that Columbus proved the Earth was round in 1492, when he sailed from Spain to the Caribbean. This is not even close to true! By Columbuss time, scientists had known the Earth was round for almost two thousand years.

The earliest Greek thinkers disagreed about the shape of the Earth. Thales thought it was a round, flat disk floating in water, like a pancake thats fallen overboard at sea.

Anaximander thought the Earth was a cylinder, while Anaximenes (no relation) believed it was a flat rectangle floating on compressed air.

But by 500 BC or so, most people agreed with the philosophers Pythagoras and Aristotle: The Earth was round, like a ball. There was good evidence for this.

If you really want to celebrate the discovery of round Earth, dont celebrate Columbus Day on October 12celebrate Eratosthenes (air-uh-TOSS-thuh-neez) Day on June 21! Eratosthenes was the Greek who invented the word geography and a very smart guyin fact, he was the head librarian at the ancient worlds largest library, in Alexandria. Around 240 BC , Eratosthenes devised a very clever experiment to measure the Earth. In late June, on the longest day of the year, he had two sticks placed straight in the ground in two different cities, five hundred miles apart, and measured their shadows. The shadows were different lengths, which meant the sticks werent parallelthe Earth was round after all!

Whats more, Eratosthenes could use the length of the shadow to calculate the size of the entire Earth, without ever leaving Egypt. His measurement was about 24,600 miles, and today we know that the Earth actually measures 24,902 miles around at the equator. Eratosthenes was off by just a few hundred miles!