Reading a Map - Vocabulary Words
Once you know these words, you'll know quite a lot about reading maps.
Vocabulary Words:
Once you know these words, you'll know quite a lot about reading maps.
Vocabulary Words:
- map title - like the title of many books, the map title tells the subject of the map
- map key - like the key to our house, the map key "lets us in" on the information contained in the map; it's sometimes called the legend
- compass rose - this is the direction marker that shows the cardinal directions
- cardinal directions - the word cardinal sometimes means main or primary; cardinal directions are the main directions: north, south, east and west
- intermediate directions - the word intermediate means lying or occurring between two extremes. In this case, intermediate directions are those directions lying between the main directions; northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest.
- the locator is a small map or picture of a globe. It shows where the area shown on the main map is, you guessed it, located.
- map scale - compares the distance on a map to the distance in the real world
- inset map - the word inset means place a smaller thing in a larger thing so inset map means a smaller map placed within a larger map
- grid - north-south and east-west lines on a map that cross each other to form a patter of squares
- lines of latitude - the east-west lines on a map
- lines of longitude - north-south lines on a map
- hemisphere - A half of the earth, usually as divided into northern and southern halves by the equator
- equator - an imaginary circle around Earth: the imaginary great circle around Earth that is the same distance from the North and South Poles and divides Earth into the northern and southern hemispheres
- prime meridian - a line of longitude, at which longitude is defined to be 0°. A prime meridian and its opposite in a 360°-system, the 180th meridian, form a great circle.
- parallel lines - the lines you see on maps that are from left to right.
