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Scale

When you zoom in, the scale of the map increases (it gets larger). A large scale map covers a smaller land area than a small scale map. A map that is zoomed in to a small town is large scale, while a map of Canada is small scale.

This is rather counterintuitive. In fact, it confuses many people.

Explanation: Scale is a ratio. 1:10 means that every unit on the map represents ten units in the real world. Or in this case the map is one tenth the size of the real world. Because its a ratio it doesn't matter if the units are centimeters, miles... anything. If you have a 1: 100 000 map, the map is 1/100 000 the size of the actual place. 1/100 000 is a much smaller fraction, a.k.a ratio, a.k.a scale than 1:10.

Do you have a headache yet? Let's move along, shall we?

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Last Edit May 18, 2001   Comments? Contact: pjordan@dem.state.ri.us
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