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THE ONLY WAY IS UP!
Scale models of things like ships are replicas of the real thing - but built to scale. If a model of a ship of 120 metres in length and with a beam of 20 metres was to be built, the first thing the model maker would do would be to work out a scale. Which scale would you use? 1cm: 1m; or 1cm: 10m? Which scale would produce the bigger model? Would either scale model fit in a bottle?
Scale
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The same notion of scale applies to maps. Scale can be shown on TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS in 3 ways:
1. Scale can be shown as a statement in words: one centimetre to one kilometre
2. Scale can be shown as a representative fraction or ratio: 1/100,000 or 1:100,000
In case of a representative fraction, the numerator represents the number of units on the map and the denominator represents the number of units on the ground.
3. Scale can be shown as a line or linear scale. In this case the distance between two points on a map can be directly transferred to the line scale. The real distance can then be read in metres or kilometres.
Sometimes the first section of a line scale is divided into fractions. Sometimes all sections are divided into fractions. What distance does each fraction represent on the above scale?
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