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Bored with your day-to-day life? Looking for a getaway? Why not browse through an atlas (a collection of maps).
Maps can take you on flights of fancy all over the world—and even out of it. Of course, most people use maps to help them get from one place to another. But maps can spark your imagination, suggesting where you could go, might go, and maybe will go! Maps also give us a look into the past by showing us what people understood about the world at various points in history.
A map is a picture that shows how different places relate to each other. A single map can’t tell us everything, so each map shows a selected reality. A map may be scribbled on a piece of scrap paper. Or it may be carefully painted on parchment as a work of art.
Mapmaking, or cartography, is both a science and an art, because people expect maps to be both nice to look at and also accurate. Let’s take a look at some maps and travel to a few new places!
Over the centuries, cartographers—also called mapmakers—have developed certain methods for making maps more understandable. Here are some of them. ▼
◀ Scale
Scale is the ratio of map size to ground distance. On any given map, a small distance represents a larger distance in the real world.
▲ Latitude
We measure latitude in degrees north or south of the equator. The equator is the imaginary line around the center of the Earth. There are 90° of north latitude and 90° of south latitude.
▲ Longitude
Longitude is the angular distance east or west of the prime meridian. That’s an imaginary line that runs north–south through Greenwich, England. The prime meridian is 0°.
▲ Coordinates
Each degree of latitude and longitude is divided into 60 minutes (60'). Each minute is divided into 60 seconds (60"). Want to know exactly where a place is? Get its coordinates. Those are numbers that describe a place’s latitude and longitude. The coordinates of Washington, D.C., are latitude 38° 54' 2" N and longitude 77° 00' 34" W.
▲ Date Line
The international date line is another imaginary line. It runs north–south through the Pacific Ocean. Because it’s mostly along the 180th meridian, you can tell it’s on the other side of the world from the prime meridian. There are 180 degrees of west longitude and 180 degrees of east longitude.
▲ Legend
Maps use symbols to represent information. Cities are usually indicated by a dot, for example. The bigger the dot is, the bigger the city is.
