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Maps & Navigation: fun facts and quiz
The essentials in 7 ideas, with fun facts, an illustrated story and a quiz to see how much you know.
The essentials
Latitude & Longitude
Latitude measures how far north or south of the equator you are; longitude, how far east or west of the prime meridian through Greenwich, London.
Key fact
Together, they give every place on Earth a unique address.
The Compass
A compass needle is a small magnet that lines up with Earth’s magnetic field and points roughly north. Magnetic compasses were used in China about 1,000 years ago.
Key fact
Magnetic north and true north aren’t quite in the same place.
Map Projections
You can’t flatten a globe without stretching it. Every flat map distorts size, shape or distance somewhere, and each projection chooses its trade-offs.
Key fact
On the Mercator map, Greenland looks as big as Africa.
Reading Maps
A map’s scale tells you how distance on paper matches the real world, and its legend explains the symbols. Contour lines show hills: the closer together, the steeper.
Key fact
At 1:50,000, 2 cm on the map is 1 km on the ground.
Time Zones
The world is split into time zones about every 15 degrees of longitude, because Earth turns 15 degrees an hour. Many borders bend the lines.
Key fact
China uses a single time zone, despite its width.
Navigating by the Stars
Before GPS, sailors found latitude from the height of the Sun or the North Star. Longitude stayed hard until accurate sea clocks arrived in the 1700s.
Key fact
John Harrison’s marine clocks solved longitude at sea.
Digital Maps
Digital maps combine satellite images, street data and GPS. Many apps also use live data from phones to spot traffic jams.
Key fact
Google Maps launched in 2005.
Fun facts
One degree of latitude is about 111 km, wherever you are.
Early Chinese compasses were spoons carved from magnetic rock, spinning on a bronze plate.
On a Mercator map, Russia looks bigger than Africa, but Africa is almost twice its size.
Britain’s Ordnance Survey began as military mapping, which is why “ordnance”, meaning weapons, is in its name.
Nepal’s clocks run 5 hours 45 minutes ahead of GMT, one of the few time zones set to a quarter hour.
The North Star won’t always point north: Earth’s slow wobble will make Vega the pole star in about 12,000 years.
GPS needs signals from at least four satellites to fix your position.
Story: The Clock That Found the Sea
The Clock That Found the Sea
1707. Four British warships wreck off the Scilly Isles, partly because their navigators can’t work out their longitude.
Parliament offers a huge prize for a fix. Astronomers expect to win it. A self-taught carpenter, John Harrison, builds clocks instead.
His watch-sized H4 keeps time at sea within seconds. Comparing it with the Sun, sailors can finally find their longitude.
True or false?
Tap your answer to see if you got it, and why.
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Question 1 of 10
The equator is at zero degrees latitude.
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True. The poles are at 90 degrees.
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Question 2 of 10
A compass needle is a magnet.
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True. It lines up with Earth’s magnetic field.
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Question 3 of 10
A flat map can’t keep every property of the globe.
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True. Something always gets stretched.
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Question 4 of 10
Contour lines close together mean a steep slope.
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True. The height changes quickly over a short distance.
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Question 5 of 10
Earth turns about 15 degrees every hour.
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True. 360 degrees in 24 hours.
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Question 6 of 10
Sailors used the North Star to find latitude.
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True. Its height above the horizon matches your latitude.
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Question 7 of 10
Map apps can use phone data to spot traffic jams.
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True. Slow-moving phones on a road reveal a jam.
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Question 8 of 10
Longitude measures distance north or south of the equator.
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False. That’s latitude. Longitude is east–west.
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Question 9 of 10
Magnetic north is exactly at the North Pole.
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False. It’s some distance away, and it wanders.
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Question 10 of 10
The Mercator map shows every country’s true size.
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False. It hugely enlarges places near the poles.
Keep going in the app
KnowSoda learns what you know and brings back what you’re about to forget. Maps & Navigation has 6 more ideas at the Advanced and Expert levels.
Sources
- Royal Museums Greenwich — Longitude, the prime meridian and John Harrison
- National Geographic Education — Maps, latitude and longitude, projections
- Ordnance Survey — Map reading guides
- NOAA — Magnetic north and the geomagnetic field
- Royal Museums Greenwich — The prime meridian
- British Museum — The Babylonian map of the world
- Maguire et al. (2000), navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers, PNAS 97
- GPS.gov — GPS accuracy
