The meridians and parallels that, by convention, define the geographic coordinates of places on the surface of the Earth can be grouped together into twelve shapes called gores, each covering 30° in longitude. If we imagine that we could "peel" the Earth as we would an orange, we can lay the gores flat on a plane surface, forming a map that is discontinuous but free of distortions. This method made it possible to draw, print, and construct a terrestrial globe by pasting the twelve gores onto the solid surface of a sphere.