Globes Map Skills For Beginners (2nd Ed, 1987)

[Music] thank you [Music] suppose you were a creature  who lived on another planet and one day you took your lunch  said goodbye to your family got into your spaceship and went off to spend  the day exploring and supposed the first planet you saw was the Earth if you saw it from very far  away it would look small and round like a coin but when you got closer you'd probably notice that the  Earth isn't round and flat like a coin but round like a huge ball you'd never be able to see all of  its surface at one time and part of what you could see would be hidden by clouds but suppose you  could see the Earth without the clouds you could learn quite a few things about it just by looking  for instance you could tell from space that large parts of the Earth are blue those parts are water  the other parts which are other colors are land the more you looked from your spaceship the  more interesting things about the Earth you'd probably see in fact you might try to think  of some way to show your parents and friends what you saw something you could use to let  them know what the Earth was really like for instance you might draw them a  picture or take a picture with a camera that would give them some idea of what the  Earth looked like but a picture would only show the Earth from one side so maybe you  could take a lot of pictures from all sides but they'd still be flat flat pictures wouldn't  really show someone how the round earth looked so what would well suppose you  thought about what the Earth looked like when you first saw it from  far away when it looked much smaller a small Earth this might give you an idea  why not make a small model of the Earth what's a model well a model of say your spaceship  might be like this it would have the same shape as the real spaceship and all the parts you could  see would be in the same places as on the real one your model would just be smaller you might  make your model of the Earth about this big you could make it round like the Earth but without  clouds so you could see all of its surface now you would have something that you could  use to show the people back home what the earth looks like in a way that would be easy  for anyone to understand you'd have a globe to make your Globe as helpful as possible  you'd probably color bodies of water on it blue and choose a different color for the land so  people could easily tell them apart you'd end up using a lot more blue because on the earth  there's much more water than there is land and then to show where there are mountains on the  Earth's surface you could even make some parts of the land bumpy or make them look bumpy if you  did these things when you showed your Globe to the people back home it would give them a good  idea of what the Earth was like people would probably be very interested but they might have  questions for instance they might want to know whether the different parts of the Earth have  names or if there are countries on the Earth to answer these questions you'd need to  add some things to your globe that someone wouldn't be able to see from space you could  make another trip and this time land on the earth you'll find out from Earth people that  they call their big areas of water oceans the oceans have separate names even though  they're actually all one big body of water here's how they look on your globe  this one is the Atlantic Ocean here's the Pacific Ocean and this is the Indian Ocean and you could find out the names of the large  areas of land Earth people call them continents these three are almost like one big  continent they're Africa Europe and Asia these two are also connected  North America and South America the others are Australia and Antarctica [Music] you could even find  out where the boundary lines are for all the countries on the continents you could see that  some of the continents have a lot of countries some have just a few and one continent has only one country if your Globe showed the names of the  countries and the names of the continents and the names of the oceans you'd have a  globe that would tell people a lot more about the Earth than anyone could see  from space and would also be just like some of the globes that Earth people  themselves use to study their planet but what can people find out by looking at a  globe besides the shapes of things and their names plenty let's take the countries and names  away again and look at some other things when people use a globe it's just as if they  could take the Earth in their hands and turn it to learn about any part they want to  see for instance if they turn the globe this way they see almost all land turn it  halfway around and they see almost all ocean or they might want to look at a different part  of the globe Maybe by turning it this way right in the middle is a place called the North Pole  where the North Pole is there's only ice and water if they look at the opposite side of the  globe they're looking at the South Pole that's here on the continent Antarctica when you see the globe this way the North  Pole is here and the South Pole is here there is a line drawn all the way around  most Globes halfway between these two poles this line is called the equator the equator  isn't really drawn on the earth of course it's an imaginary line that divides the earth into  two halves the Earth is like a ball in space another name for a ball is a sphere and  half a sphere is called a hemisphere this half of the Earth the half with the North  Pole in it is called the northern hemisphere you can tell somebody where something is  by saying it's in the northern hemisphere or in the southern hemisphere that's this  half with the South Pole in it [Music] you could also think of the earth as divided  in half through the poles this way into two different hemispheres this half is the Eastern  Hemisphere it includes most of the land on Earth you can say that Europe Asia Africa and  Australia are in the eastern hemisphere and you can say that these  two continents North America and South America are in the Western Hemisphere people also use Globes to help them think about  traveling from one place to another on Earth suppose they want to travel from say here  to here they can tell by looking whether they need to go over water perhaps on a  ship or in a plane or whether for other trips they might be able to go entirely on  land for instance in a car [Music] they can get a good idea of what they might pass along  the way or what stops they might want to make a globe can also help people find the shortest  possible route between two places on the Earth sometimes that's easy to guess and  sometimes it turns out to be surprising for instance if you wanted to go from here to  here the shortest route would not be this long line instead it would be this much shorter line  that passes near the North Pole you can find the shortest route between any two places on a  globe by stretching a string between them [Music] so as you can see a globe can give you many  different kinds of information it can show you where there are oceans and continents  and what countries are on each continent and the globe can tell you which  hemisphere these places are in and even help you find a good route between  places in fact a globe tells you so much about the Earth you might find when you  get home that everybody wants one [Music] foreign [Music] foreign