Know All About Maps

When we were kids, we used to fancy a map! Even if we never understood anything, it felt great to locate places on it. Isn’t it? But, now that we are grown up, things are different! Let us try to know all that we can about maps. This will help us in studying and understanding the world geography better.

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What is a Map?

A map is a representation or a drawing of the earth’s surface, or a part of it, on a flat surface, according to a scale.  It could be hand drawn or printed. It helps us identify the places and locations within an area helping us to navigate from one place to another.

Types of Maps

Maps are of several types.  They are mainly classified into:

• Physical or Relief Maps: These show natural features of the earth.
• Political Maps: These maps show the cities, town and villages, countries and states of the world with their boundaries.
• Thematic Maps: These maps focus on specific information like the map of a rainfall, roads, tourist places.

Components of Maps

Maps have three components: distance, direction, and symbol. We measure distance in terms of scale. A scale is a ratio between the actual distance on the ground and the distance shown on the map.

• To measure large areas like continents or countries on a paper, we use a small scale map.
• To show a small area like your village to town on a paper,  we use a large scale map.

Directions are cardinal points like North, South, East and West. And symbols are certain letters, shades, colours, pictures and lines, which give us information about a limited place. Various other things like sketches and plans are used to draw an area of a large scale.

Globe Versus A Map

A globe differs from a map in many aspects. Let us look at some key points of difference between a globe and a map. A compilation of many maps is called an atlas.

• A globe is a three-dimensional sphere while a map is two-dimensional.
• The globe represents the whole earth, whereas a map may represent the whole earth or just a part of it.
• A globe can be used to get a broad-level picture of the world while maps provide more specific information about different places.
• A globe, being spherical in shape, spins around an axis. However, maps, are a representation on a piece of paper, does not spin.
• Globes are made of hard materials and cannot be folded making them difficult to be carried around. However, you can easily fold and carry maps all along with you.
• You can use a map for navigating from one place to another. However, globes don’t provide enough specific details to help you in navigation.

Question For You

Q. Discuss the types of maps.

Ans: Maps are of several types.  They are mainly classified into:

• Physical or relief maps: These show natural features of the earth.
• Political maps: These maps show the cities, town and villages, countries and states of the world with their boundaries.
• Thematic maps: These maps focus on specific information like maps of rainfall, road, tourist places.