How Does The Great Circles and the Small Circles Work?

Imagine Earth is a giant orange, and you’re drawing lines on it, that’s how great circles and small circles work!

A great circle is like a line that goes all the way around the middle of your orange. If you cut your orange in half with a knife, the edge where you cut is a great circle. These are the shortest paths between two points on Earth, just like how the fastest way to go from one side of an orange to the other is through the middle.

A small circle is like a line that goes around part of your orange, not all the way through the middle. Imagine you’re drawing a circle around the top of your orange, that’s a small circle. These lines are longer and curve more than great circles.

Think about how planes fly from New York to London. They don’t go straight across the map, they take a curvy path that looks like it goes over the North Pole. That curvy path is a great circle because it’s the shortest way around Earth, just like cutting through the middle of an orange! Imagine Earth is a giant orange, and you’re drawing lines on it, that’s how great circles and small circles work!