Tools of Geography
Globes are a spherical shape just like Earth. What differs between Earth and globes is their _________.
What is scale?
North, south, east, and west are the four ___________.
What are cardinal directions?
This part of the map shows the meaning of the symbols and colors on the map.
What is the map key (or map legend)?
These two states are not included in the term "lower 48".
What are Alaska and Hawaii?
It is impossible to represent a sphere as a flat surface. Therefore, all maps have this.
What is distortion?
These lie in-between the cardinal directions. Examples include northwest and southeast.
What are intermediate directions?
This part of the map shows the cardinal directions.
What is the compass rose?
These are the top two most commonly spoken languages in the United States.
What are English and Spanish?
This tool for viewing the earth is a computer program most like to be used by professional geographers, government agencies, and businesses.
What are geographic information systems (GIS)?
Latitude lines tell us how many degrees north or south something is from the _____________.
What is the equator?
This part of the map shows how much a given space on the map correlates in size to the real world.
What is the scale bar?
This region of the United States experiences the most tornadoes.
What is the midwest?
These are photographs taken from some place in the air, such as a plane, helicopter, or drone.
What are aerial photographs?
Longitude lines tell us how far east or west something is from the ___________.
What is the prime meridian?
Latitude and longitude help us find this, which is the most accurate way to locate a place on the earth.
What is absolute location?
Most Americans work in this industry.
What is the service industry?
These are the five themes of geography.
What are location, place, region, movement, and human-environment interaction?
This is a way of describing a place's location compared to something else. It involves using direction words and is less specific than absolute location.
What is relative location?
This map projection is commonly used because it preserves the shapes of continents, but it massively distorts the size of continents by making those near the poles look much larger than they are.
What is the Mercator projection?
This is what we call an several cities that surround a larger city.