Clear typography

I liked the typography used in this map of the Antarctica. It's very sharp and easy to read.

Lab 4: Typography

I loved this lab! Lots of detailed work and it didn't turn out perfect but it was so much fun. :-D Some of the letters are a bit crooked but I'm pretty happy with the final map. Does someone actually get to do this stuff for a living?

Mollweide Graticule

Lab #3 was about drawing a Mollweide projection. Not too difficult to do although required some simple math to determine the grid size. Scale is 1:157,776,200 (i.e. 1 inch on the map represents 157,776,200 inches in real life).

Avebury stone circles

This week's map is a bit different, a local map of a stone circle in the U.K. Pretty neat! The map was downloaded from here.

Lab#2

Map of SW Finland, Aland etc. from 1751

I chose this map as my "map of the week" because I'm fascinated with old maps. It's interesting to think how much work went into mapmaking back then (this one is 250+ years old). In this map the shape of the part of Finland shown isn't really correct but the islands off Turku coast and Aland are very detailed. On most modern maps you cannot see the islands in this detail.

 

Three geography links

Google Earth is a wonderful tool for exploring Earth. You can see areas in detail and zoom in quite close to pretty much anywhere, this free program guarantees hours upon hours of educational fun. Google Earth works on the Mac too, yay!

GNIS which is short for Geographic Names Information System, is great for looking up data on different locations, names and other information like elevation. Just type in a name of a place (ie. Fairfax) and you get numerous results. You can define your search narrowing down the results as well. It is interesting to see that there are many places in the United States with the same name and you can find lots of places not found in a regular map.

Measurement conversion factors is an easy stop for all the assignments that require you to convert from the english system to the metric system and so on. The web site is very simple and nothing fancy but includes lots of information.