District Political Map

You may have seen several maps in your classroom such as the map of India, the map of  Telangana, etc. Today, we will study the map of our own district

A Game

Form two teams; the first team should select a place on the map, write it down on a piece of paper secretly and give it to the teacher. The second team can ask questions about the place. Now, the first team can answer them saying only  ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. E.g Team two can ask questions like, Is this place in Mahabubnagar district? Is this place by the seacoast? Is this a district headquarter? Then the second team should locate the place decided by the first team through

Way to Mallika’s house sketch Map

Laila and Mallika met at Red Cross service activity in Nizamabad. They became close friends there. Mallika lives in Venkatapuram village and Laila lives in Adilabad. Laila planned to visit Mallika’s house in the coming holidays. She wrote a letter asking Mallika how to reach her house from the bus stand. Mallika was happy about her friend’s proposed visit. She sent the details of the location of her house with a sketch map

Directions

Look at the following picture carefully

If you stand facing  east, all the things to your right are towards south; all the things to your left are towards north; and all the things behind you are towards west

Mallika proposed to play a game to understand directions better

Directions on a map

Usually, maps are prepared in such a manner that north is at the top of the map and south is at the bottom. Therefore,  east is on the right and west  is on the left. In some special cases, maps may be made with south on the top or on the left. However, in such cases, a special mention will be made on the map and an arrow will be  given showing north.

Scale’ or distance on a map

On a pleasant evening, Mallika took Laila to see the village stream and they walked over the bridge. The bridge had 6 lamp posts at equal distance. The distance between two posts is about 100 metres. The length of the bridge is about 500 metres.

When they came back, Laila wanted to draw a sketch of the bridge and the lamp posts on a paper so that she could take it with her. When she was drawing the lamp posts, she took care to draw them at equal distances. The distance between the first and the last lamp posts was about 5 centimetres. Her sketch was much smaller than the actual bridge

Measure the total distance in Laila’s sketch map from lamp post one to lamp post six. The actual distance between the two lamp posts is ........ mts In the sketch, the distance between two lamp posts is only ........ cm. and the total distance is only ......... cm. You might have observed that Laila has drawn the lamp posts at equal distance

We can also write down the relation between the distance on the bridge and its representation in the sketch in the following way: 5 cm on the sketch map = ……. metres on the bridge  1 cm on the sketch map = ….... meters on the bridge  This is called the ‘Scale’

Symbols

You know that maps are too small for us to draw pictures of the things shown on them. For example, we cannot draw the real school or bus stand or Mallika’s house, as it will take too much space on the map. Therefore, we always show things on a map with the help of symbols. You may have noticed that in the district map, villages and towns are shown with dots and circles. Map makers prepare symbols appropriate to their needs. But some common symbols, which are called ‘Conventional Symbols’, are also used. The following is a complete map with symbols, scale and proper orientation