student asking question

Is "altitude" same as "height?"

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Good guess! They are a bit different. Altitude refers to the height or elevation of something, relative to sea or ground level. So, the altitude of 579 kilometres here refers to its elevation from ground level on Earth. It's generally only used to refer to high elevations. You wouldn't use this to refer to people or objects close to the ground, you would use height for that instead. Ex: The plane is travelling at an altitude of 700 km above Earth. Ex: The tree has a height of 10 metres.

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