At the north pole the only direction you can travel is southward and at the south pole the only direction you can travel is northward. There is no position eastward or westward where you can find a point which faces only in one direction. So therefore no east pole or west pole.
I'm gonna have to think about that m'dear. Just for awhile. Thank you for the clearly stated and simplified explanation. I just sometimes have difficulty grasping certain things and I think this is one of them Kg! :)
There is no East or West pole because the earth does not rotate around a horizontal axis---it spins around its vertical axis---and thus there are only 2 poles by definition.
Earth rotates on an axis that is almost vertical (can't remember what angle it is tilted at). Because of this you can reach a maximum North and maximum South, meaning if you are at the South pole, no matter where you turn you can only go North, not more South, thus making it one of the poles. On the other hand, if you head East you can keep going East (or West) for as long as you want and you'll just circle the Earth without ever reaching a point where you can't go East. Thus, East and West have no poles.
A geographical pole is either of two points on the surface of a rotating planet. It is the place where the axis of rotation meets the surface of the planet. The north geographical pole of a body is 90 degrees north of the equator. The south geographical pole lies 90 degrees south of the equator.
This post was edited by tom jackson at May 23, 2019 10:06 AM MDT
Kittigate 