A map usually has a legend, or key, that gives the scale of the map and explains what the various symbols represent. Some maps show relief, or changes in elevation. A common way to show relief is contour lines, also called topographic lines. These are lines that connect points that have equal elevation.

North, South, East, and West are the four main “cardinal” directions. On a map, North is at the top, South at the bottom, West to the left, and East to the right.

All maps follow a uniform way of naming the directions. Take any map and spread it on a table or hang it on a wall, The top of a map shows the north direction, while the bottom of the map shows the south direction. Towards the right is the east and the west lies towards the left, Look at a map of India in an atlas.

Most modern-day maps typically show an orientation with north at the top of the two-dimentional depiction. In other eras, different directions at the top were more prevalent, and all directions have been used by different societies and cultures to depict our world.

Early Chinese compasses were actually oriented to point south, which was considered to be more desirable than deepest darkest north. But in Chinese maps, the Emperor, who lived in the north of the country was always put at the top of the map, with everyone else, his loyal subjects, looking up towards him.

Traditionally, cartographers put north at the top. This has not always been true, many old maps put south at the top. With north at the top of the map, south will be on the bottom, east to the right and west to the left.

It is completely artificial that we have North at the top of a map. The convention came a few centuries ago when Northern hemisphere, European navigators started using the North star and the magnetic compass. Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from.

A map made by Europe for Europe On the Mercator map, Africa – sitting on the equator, reasonably undistorted – is left looking much smaller than it really is. But Canada, Russia, the United States and Europe are greatly enlarged. That European and North American countries are enlarged is no accident.

The Accuracy of World Maps The short answer: absolutely not. Thanks to the varying distances between latitude lines away from the equator, the map pretty severely distorts surrounding landmasses.

On the map 1 inch is equal to 0.4 miles. Example 3a – The map distance between two points is 6 inches. The map scale is 1:24,000 (in/in).

The Winkel Tripel flat map projection, which has a score of 4.563, and the Mercator projection, which has a score of 8.296. This new flat map developed by Gott, Robert Vanderbei and David Goldberg managed to hit a score of 0.881. It has smaller distance errors than any single-sided map — setting a new record.

According to the team’s rating system, the top-rated flat map projection is the Winkel Tripel, a map that originated in 1921, when German cartographer Oswald Winkel proposed it, and which the National Geographic Society now uses.

When talking of accuracy, a globe is more accurate than the map. A map presents the physical features of a particular region of the earth on a plane surface. A globe can be called as a duplicate earth. It is round in shape and shows accurate areas, distances, directions and relative shape and size.

Another way to describe location is to use reference lines to describe coordinates, or absolute position, on the globe. Two types of imaginary reference lines are used to locate positions or points and to make accurate globes and maps. These lines are called parallels of latitude and meridians of longitude.

To help us locate places on the earth’s surface, we use a coordinate system. This coordinate system is like placing a giant grid over the earth. This grid has lines extending from east to west called lines of latitude and lines extending from north to south called lines of longitude.

Search for a place

1. On your computer, open Google Maps.
2. Type an address or name of a place.
3. Press Enter or click Search .
4. You’ll see search results as red mini-pins or red dots, where mini-pins show the top results.