Progress?

The scale girls have met and we are formulating a lesson based on food miles. This is an subject that was incorporated in both our respective teams curriculum plan. It can incorporate scale in a number of ways including:
1.local to global
2.personal knowlegde
3.use of scale on a map to assess distance
We hope incorporate some group assessment, critical and creative thinking and link with ICT.

Scales on a map

Of course maps range considerable from a global to a local OS map, but the one thing that they all have in common is a scale.

When scaling down a map, every part of the map is scaled by the same amount. This insures that every object on the map is the same proportion as everything else on the map. If a city is twice as large as a neighboring town, an accurate scaled map will show the same relationship on paper. The drawn city will be twice as large as the drawn town.

A "scale" shows the relationship between a certain distance on the map and the distance on the ground. On a map there is often a 'legend' that provides information on the symbols used and specifies the scale.

The scale can be expressed numerically and/or literally. An example of the former is 1/100,000 or 1:100,000. i.e. one centimeter on the map equals 100,000 centimeters (1 kilometer) on the earth. A word statement gives a written description of map distance, such as "One centimeter equals one kilometer".

A graphic scale does solve this problem because it is simply a line marked with distance on the ground which the map user can use along with a ruler to determine scale on the map.

In terms of teaching this element of scale the students can be provided with a map and asked to work out the distance between a number of points in real terms using the map scale. Also they can then look at the results on Google earth so that they can 'see' the distance for themselves.

Types of Scale

Scale is about size, either relative or absolute, and involves a fundamental set of issues in geography. The concept of scale can be confusing as it has multiple references:

• Cartographic scale refers to the depicted size of a feature on a map relative to its actual size in the world.
• Analytical scale refers to the size of the unit at which some problem is analysied, such as at the local or global level.
• Phenomenon scale refers to the size at which human or physical earth structures or processes exist, regardless of how they are studied or represented.

Although the three types of scale outlined above are frequently treated independently, they are in fact interrelated in important ways that are relevant to all geographers.