My Incredible Adventure- Using Dividers

Captain Amanda teaches Alice how to measure distance with the dividers

How to use dividers

Using dividers and the latitude scale on your nautical chart, you are able to measure distance in nautical miles. (Remember, do not use longitudes to measure distance. Longitude lines converge at the poles and the distance between them changes relative to your position on the earth.)

One minute equals one nautical mile. Examine the scale of your chart. In these examples, our chart is in degrees and minutes.

Place one point of the dividers at position A and the other point at at position B. Then, maintaining the spread, measure the distance using the latitude scale. In this case, the distance is 15 minutes or 15 nautical miles. Always use the latitude scale located in the same horizontal region that you are measuring.