Question

What is a scale and how is it shown on a map?

Answer 1

Hint:The graphical representation of the world or a section of the world is called a map.The compressed version of the real world is known as map. This means that a large portion of the world is compressed into a smaller piece of paper or in a digital file.

Complete answer: Scale is defined as the ratio of distance on the map to the corresponding distance on the ground. The three main ways in which scales are represented on the map are:
1. Bar scales: The scale in a bar graph is depicted in graphical format.The length of the bar shows what the length actually represents in units in the real world.
2.Verbal Scale. This scale shows that 1 inch measured on the map is 100 inch on the ground.
A map is classified as large, medium and small scales. The small scale maps refer to continents or large regions.They show large areas within a small space. The representative fraction of these are very small. Large scale maps represent the details of a small area with much precision. These are called large scales because their representative fraction is large.

Note:Scales help in calculating the area on the map.The scales determine how many features that a map should contain. The Representative Fraction(RF) for a large scale is- 1:25,000 or larger, the small scale is-1:1,000,000, the medium scale is-1:1,000,000 to 1:25,000.