JC Human Geography

Today in class we learned about longitude it is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the earth's surface. It is measured by imagery lines circling the earth and running through the poles. We are going to have a quiz tomorrow on labeling countries. We turned the lights on for the first time all school year. We also labeled some coordinates of places on a map and found its longitude on a globe. We had about 20 minutes to do what we wanted to do for the rest of class today.

Today in class we talked about ways of describing where things are. Geography is the study of where things are found on Earth's surface and the reasons for the locations. A map is a two dimensional or flat scale model of the earths surface. Cartography is art of making maps. Some of the purposes of maps are as a reference tool to identify an objects absolute or relative location and as a communication tool to covey physical features of human activities. Absolute location is the regional position situation of a place relative to the position of other places and latitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the north south position of a point on the earths surface.

In class today we talked about situation it is the location of a place relative to other places. It helps to find an unfamiliar place, understanding its importance, and access to other places. We also talked about why we design products like the iPhone here and have it manufactured in places like China. The reason for this is because it is cheaper to import it over seas. Another thing we talked about was How people in China do not get payed that much for example in america if you are making about  $1300 a month in the United States you would probably make about $300 a month in China and there are over a billion people working there which means it is a lot more expensive if someone gets hurt at a factory because you have to pay for all of there medical bills and then find someone to take there place while they are recovering.

Today we covered a lot in class we talked about maps and how we are on the same latitude as North Korea. We also talked about site it is the physical character of a place climates include water sources, topography, soil, vegetation, latitude, and elevation. We also talked about how some plants can only grow in some places such as avocados can only be grown in mexico and bananas can only be grown in the  Caribbean. Another thing we talked about was humans have built land where land was never there before and the buildings we have built that can house and put to work about thirty thousand people. 

Today we got our first test back I was pretty happy with my grade. The part I did the best on is the multiple choice and the essays I aced the multiple choice and only lost a couple points on the essay. I could have gotten a few more points if I spent a little longer studying. What I struggled with the most was what the gathering place was for the Ancient Greeks and I could not figure out what the name of the tallest mountain in Alaska was it was only for extra credit. The average score for the class was 86.4 five people voted guilty for the essay and sixteen people wrote not guilty I thought the average score was pretty good it was a high B. The format of the test was not to bad and I think if a took another test in this format I would do better because I know what it would look like and I would study a little harder.

We are researching what the difference between a Mercator map and a Peter Projection map. Some differences are a Projection map is more stretched out and a Mercator map is not the reason for it being like this is to make it more accurate because if you were to take a globe and make it flat it would be stretched a little bit and it makes the continents bigger. If you were to take a globe and put it side by side with a Mercator map the continents are not going to be the same size. Mercator maps have more colors to separate the states and a Projection map is just one color per continent is does not make locating states easy. It also does not show the locations of major highways, airports and mountains. Somethings they do have in common is they have oceans and a key showing how much an inch is in real scale like one inch on the map is however many miles in real life.