Maps — Social Science STD 6 — Question

Maps reduce the entire world or its part to fit on a sheet of paper.
But this reduction is done very carefully so that distances between the places are kept true:

1. Reduction of map is only possible when small distances on paper represents a large distance on the ground.
2. To reduce a map, a scale is chosen.

Scale is the ratio between the actual distance on the ground and the distance shown on the map.

1. The distance between school and home of student is 10km. If he shows this 10km distance by 2cm on map, it means, 1cm on the map will show 5km on ground. Thus the scale will be 1cm.= 5 km. In this way scale is very important in a map. If the scale is known it will be easy to calculate distance between any two places.
2. Scales are used for measuring distance. For example to find out the distance between the post office and the clock tower one can measure the distance between these points on the map. (Then the same distance on the scale. Types of Maps on the Basic of Scale.)