90% of my users are either in Florida or Alaska.
To the extent the phrase has meaning, the claim is still untrue; the International Date Line goes out of its way to avoid crossing Alaska.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Hemisphere
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semisopochnoi_Island ("At 179°46' East (+179.7667) (in the Eastern Hemisphere), the easternmost tip of Semisopochnoi is, by longitude, the easternmost land location in the United States and North America.")
FWIW, Semisopochnoi Island is a TIL moment for me, too =)
Ask a geographer or cartographer about hemispheres.
They also don't have anything to do with how far east or west a point is.
You have two options:
1. East is the direction in which the Earth rotates, and West is the opposite direction. By this definition, no point on the earth has an east-coordinate or a west-coordinate.
2. East is the direction in which time gets later, and West is the direction in which time gets earlier. This is the only definition which will allow you to claim that one point is "more east" than another point. And it tells you that the difference between East and West is the International Date Line.
Latitude is absolute. Longitude is relative.
It’s looking good for longitude so far. Looks like people somehow manage to measure relative longitudes ok after all. Let’s check time zones.
“ You may notice, however, that the French collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon just to the south of Newfoundland is a half-hour ahead despite being at exactly the same longitude. By traveling west on the ferry from Newfoundland, you actually travel forward in time a half-hour.”
Oops. So by travelling consistently west in the same direction you can actually go back into a time zone you’ve previously left without crossing the date line. Not looking good. There are actually several places on Earth where this is possible. Here’s another good one. Is Kaliningrad east of Lithuania, or west of it?
“ All together, there are now three different areas where you gain two hours crossing time zones instead of just one. This also creates an unusual situation in the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave, which is now an hour ahead of Lithuania to its east, and two hours ahead of neighboring Poland.”
Good luck constructing a consistent reference frame out of that.
> “ Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east–west position of a point on the Earth's surface relative to the prime meridian.”
What was the disagreement? So you're 3° west of the prime meridian. How far west is that? Are you to the west of the prime meridian, or are you to its east?