Measuring Distance

After doing the worksheet measuring distances, I realized that in different situations distances can be really short or very very long. When we were measuring roads around the South Bay one had to be a straight distance and the other had to be a road distance, the time it took to get to the same place using the different ways was huge! In reality, places are a lot closer to us than they seem, it's just that when we have to drive or travel on ground to go to those places, the topography of an area varies and we have to go around those areas to get there. That is what takes up the extra time.

Also, as another part of the exercise, I found that measuring distance is really very helpful when looking at maps. I took a class last semester in Geology and used a lot of maps in that class. I learned a little bit about how to measure distance but not very much. (Maybe it just didn't stick as well!) However, now that I am taking more Geography courses, I am looking at maps more often. Therefore, learning how to read the scales is especially important because it helps a person determine if the map is a large scale or small scale map. Those two terms where hard to differentiate on a map because they don't mean what we think they mean in everyday life. But what I learned in this class and in my Cultural Geography class is that a small scale map can cover a larger area, and you cannot see to much detail. A large scale map covers a smaller area but has more detail in it. (I hope I got that right!) So that for sure is going to stick in my brain because it is important that I know that. So this distance exercise was really very helpful for future measuring.