Map

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Origin

Medieval Latin mappa, from Latin, napkin, towel. Post-classical Latin mappa is attested from the late 4th cent. as a term used by land surveyors, though its exact interpretation is not clear. (The usual word for a surveyor's map in classical Latin and post-classical Latin is forma .) The transition in sense from ‘cloth’ to ‘map’ is probably due to the fact that early maps were sometimes drawn on cloth.

Definitions

b : a representation of the celestial sphere or a part of it
  • 2: something that represents with a clarity suggestive of a map <the Freudian map of the mind — Harold Bloom>
  • 3: the arrangement of genes on a chromosome —called also genetic map

Description

A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes.

Many maps are static two-dimensional, geometrically accurate (or approximately accurate) representations of three-dimensional space, while others are dynamic or interactive, even three-dimensional. Although most commonly used to depict geography, maps may represent any space, real or imagined, without regard to context or scale; e.g. brain mapping, DNA mapping, and extraterrestrial mapping.

Maps of the world or large areas are often either 'political' or 'physical'. The most important purpose of the political map is to show territorial borders; the purpose of the physical is to show features of geography such as mountains, soil type or land use including infrastruction such as roads, railroads and buildings. Topographic maps show elevations and relief with contour lines or shading. Geological maps show not only the physical surface, but characteristics of the underlying rock, fault lines, and subsurface structures.

Maps that depict the surface of the Earth also use a projection, a way of translating the three-dimensional real surface of the geoid to a two-dimensional picture. Perhaps the best-known world-map projection is the Mercator projection, originally designed as a form of nautical chart.

Aeroplane pilots use aeronautical charts based on a Lambert conformal conic projection, in which a cone is laid over the section of the earth to be mapped. The cone intersects the sphere (the earth) at one or two parallels which are chosen as standard lines. This allows the pilots to plot a great-circle route approximation on a flat, two-dimensional chart.

  • Azimuthal or Gnomonic map projections are often used in planning air routes due to their ability to represent great circles as straight lines.
  • Richard Edes Harrison produced a striking series of maps during and after World War II for Fortune magazine. These used "bird's eye" projections to emphasize globally strategic "fronts" in the air age, pointing out proximities and barriers not apparent on a conventional rectangular projection of the world.

Maps exist of the solar system, and other cosmological features such as star maps. In addition maps of other bodies such as the Moon and other planets are technically not geological maps.[1]