Chap 1 Locating Places on the Earth

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LET’S EXPLORE

Question: → Observe the picture above. What do you notice? Where does the water in the lake come from? Who made the road and why? What could be the activities of people living in the small house? What could be their history? Their future?

Answer:

  • What I notice: I notice a large mountain, a calm lake, a small house with a tiled roof, and a narrow road. There are many green trees and bushes all around.
  • Water in the lake: The water in the lake might come from rain or from small streams flowing down the mountain.
  • The road: People or the government likely built the road so that they could travel to and from the house and the lake easily.
  • Activities, history, and future: The people in the house might be farmers or fishermen. Their family might have lived in that place for a very long time, for many generations. Their future will depend on what they choose to do and the changes that happen around them.

Question: → Now, looking at the picture on the facing page, what questions come to your mind? Write them down.

Answer: Looking at the picture of the big city, some questions that come to my mind are:

  • What is the name of this city?
  • What kind of work do people do in these tall, glass buildings?
  • Why are there so many buildings but the roads seem empty?
  • Is this city noisy or quiet?

Question: → How do you propose to find answers to the questions related to these two images?

Answer: To find answers, we could:

  • Ask a teacher or our parents.
  • Read books about different places, like villages and cities.
  • Look for information and pictures on the internet.
  • If possible, visit such places and talk to the people who live there.

Question: → How are our questions above relevant to Social Science?

Answer: These questions are relevant to Social Science because Social Science is all about understanding our world and the societies people live in. It helps us learn about different places, people, and their lives, both in the past and present.

 

Page 8: Game

 

Question: Let us play a game. Examine the map of this small city (Fig. 1.1). Imagine that you just got off a train at the railway station, and you want to visit the bank marked on the map. Which way would you go? Are there other possible ways? Can you locate the public garden, the school and the museum? If you want to proceed from the bank to the market, which way will you go?

Answer:

  • Route to the Bank: From the Railway Station, I would walk on the main road towards the Hospital. I would continue past the Hospital and turn right. Then I would walk past the Nagar Panchayat building, and the Bank would be on my right. Another way is to take the road that goes past the apartments.
  • Locating places: I can see the School and the Museum on the map. There is no place marked as a “public garden,” but there is an area with farms in the top right corner.
  • Route from Bank to Market: From the Bank, I would walk back to the main road and turn right. I would walk straight down this road, past the Museum. Then, I would turn left to reach the Market.

 

Page 9: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Question: → On the map in Fig. 1.1 given on page 8:

  1. Mark the hospital.
  2. What is the meaning of the blue-coloured areas?
  3. Which is farther away from the railway station — the school, the Nagar Panchayat or the public garden?

Answer:

  1. The hospital is the large building located in the center of the map.
  2. The blue-coloured areas on a map usually show water bodies. In this map, it could be a lake or a river.
  3. Looking at the map, the School seems to be the farthest from the Railway Station compared to the Nagar Panchayat.

Activity: → As a class activity, form groups of three or four students each. Let each group try to draw a map of your school and some of the streets or roads that lead to it, and a few neighbouring buildings. At the end, compare all the maps and discuss.

Answer: To do this activity:

  1. Get together in small groups with your friends.
  2. Take a blank sheet of paper and pencils.
  3. Start by drawing your school building in the middle.
  4. Think about the roads outside your school and draw them.
  5. Add any important buildings near your school, like a shop, a temple, or a post office.
  6. When you are done, look at the maps made by other groups and see how they are similar or different from yours.

 

Page 10: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Activity: → Draw a simple map of a school’s playground. Let us assume it is a rectangle, 40 m in length and 30 m in width. Draw it precisely with your ruler on a scale of 1 cm = 10 m. Now measure the diagonal of the rectangle. How many centimetres do you get? Using the scale, calculate the real length of the playground’s diagonal, in metres.

Answer:

  1. Drawing the map: Since the scale is 1 cm = 10 m, the 40 m length will be 4 cm on your paper, and the 30 m width will be 3 cm. Use a ruler to draw a rectangle that is 4 cm long and 3 cm wide.
  2. Measuring the diagonal: Now, use your ruler to draw a line from one corner of the rectangle to the opposite corner. This is the diagonal. When you measure it, it will be 5 cm long.
  3. Calculating the real length: We know that 1 cm on the map is 10 m in real life. Since the diagonal is 5 cm, its real length is 5 × 10 = 50 metres.

 

Page 11: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Question: → Consider the map of the small city again. Identify the correct and incorrect statements in the list below:

  1. The market is north of the hospital.
  2. The museum is southeast of the bank.
  3. The railway station is northwest of the hospital.
  4. The lake is northwest of the apartment blocks.

Answer: Let’s use the direction arrows (N, S, E, W) on the map.

  1. Incorrect. The market is to the south of the hospital.
  2. Correct.
  3. Correct.
  4. Correct.

Activity: → Taking your school as the starting point, do you know approximately in which cardinal direction your home is located? Discuss with your teacher and your parents.

Answer: The four main cardinal directions are North (N), South (S), East (E), and West (W). To find the direction of your home, stand in your school playground and think about which way you travel to get home. You can ask your teacher or parents to help you identify if your home is to the north, south, east, or west of your school.

Activity: → Draw a rough map of your locality or your village… Show the cardinal directions and use a few of the symbols shown in Fig. 1.2 on page 12 to mark some important features.

Answer: To draw this map:

  1. Draw your home and school on a piece of paper.
  2. Draw the main road that connects them.
  3. Add other important places like a post office (use the ‘PO’ symbol), a temple or mosque, a river, or a railway line using the correct symbols from the book.
  4. Don’t forget to draw an arrow in a corner and mark ‘N’ for North to show the directions.

 

Page 13: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Question: → Using the same terms, write down your move if you play black and respond with the same move.

Answer: In the chessboard example, the white pawn moved from square d2 to d4. If I play as black and make the same type of move, my queen’s pawn would move two squares forward. So, the move would be from

d7 to d5.

 

Page 17: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Question: → If the globe or atlas in your class has well-marked latitudes and longitudes, try to note down approximate values for the latitude and longitude of (1) Mumbai, (2) Kolkata, (3) Singapore, (4) Paris.

Answer: Here are the approximate latitude and longitude values for these cities:

  1. Mumbai: 19°N latitude, 73°E longitude
  2. Kolkata: 22°N latitude, 88°E longitude
  3. Singapore: 1°N latitude, 104°E longitude
  4. Paris: 49°N latitude, 2°E longitude

 

Page 21: LET’S EXPLORE

 

Question: → Two friends, one sitting in Porbandar (Gujarat) and the other in Tinsukia (Assam), are speaking on the phone late afternoon. The latter remarks that the sun has set in Assam and it’s now dark. The former is surprised and says, “But it’s still full daylight here!” Explain why. And, as a class activity, calculate the difference in local time between those two cities.

Answer:

  • Explanation: This happens because the Earth spins from west to east. Assam is in the eastern part of India, so it gets the sun’s light earlier in the day. This means the sun also sets earlier in Assam. Gujarat is in the western part of India, so it gets daylight later, and the sun sets much later there.
  • Time Difference Calculation: The hint says the difference in longitude is about 30°. The Earth rotates 15° every hour. So, the difference in local time between Porbandar and Tinsukia is 30 ÷ 15 =

    2 hours.

Question: → Return to the two friends sitting in Gujarat and Assam. Use this example to explain the difference between local time and standard time.

Answer:

  • Local Time: This is the time based on the sun’s actual position in the sky at a certain place. This is why the local time is different in Assam and Gujarat, and one friend sees sunset while the other has daylight.
  • Standard Time: It would be very confusing if every city in India followed its own local time. So, the whole country follows one single time, which is called the Indian Standard Time (IST). This is why even though the sun is at different positions, the watches of both friends in Gujarat and Assam will show the exact same time.

 

Page 24-25: Questions, Activities and Projects

 

1. Question:

Returning to page 10 and to Fig. 5.2 in Chapter 5 of this textbook, taking the scale to be 2.5 cm = 500 km, calculate the real distance from the estuary of the Narmada River to the estuary of the Ganga river.

Answer: This question cannot be answered because Figure 5.2 from Chapter 5 was not included in the document.

2. Question:

Why is it 5:30 pm in India when it is 12 pm or noon in London?

 

Answer: It is 5:30 pm in India when it is 12 pm in London because India’s standard time (IST) is set 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of London’s time (Greenwich Mean Time or GMT). This is because India is located to the east of London, and as the Earth spins east, time moves ahead.

3. Question:

Why do we need symbols and colours in the map?

 

Answer: We need symbols and colours on a map to show a lot of information in a small space. It is not possible to draw actual buildings, rivers, or railway lines on a small map. So, we use symbols to represent them (like ‘PO’ for Post Office) and colours (like blue for water) to make the map easy to read and understand for everyone.

4. Activity:

Find out what you have in the eight directions from your home or school.

 

Answer: The eight directions are North, Northeast (NE), East, Southeast (SE), South, Southwest (SW), West, and Northwest (NW). Stand outside your home or school and try to identify what lies in each of these directions. For example: “There is a park to the North of my school, and the main road is to the East.”

5. Question:

What is the difference between local time and standard time?

Answer:

  • Local time is the time at a place based on the overhead position of the sun. It changes for every longitude.
  • Standard time is the single, uniform time that an entire country agrees to follow for convenience. For example, India follows Indian Standard Time (IST).

6. Question: Delhi’s and Bengaluru’s latitudes are 29°N and 13°N; their longitudes are almost the same, 77°E. How much will be the difference in local time between the two cities?

Answer: There will be almost no difference in the local time between Delhi and Bengaluru. This is because time is measured by longitude, and their longitudes are almost the same (77°E).

7. Question:

Mark the following statements as true or false; explain your answers with a sentence or two.

  • Statement: All parallels of latitude have the same length.
    • False. Parallels of latitude are circles that get smaller as they move from the Equator towards the North and South Poles. The Equator is the longest parallel.
  • Statement: The length of a meridian of longitude is half of that of the Equator.
    • True. A meridian of longitude is a half-circle that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole, while the Equator is a full circle around the Earth.
  • Statement: The South Pole has a latitude of 90°S.
    • True. The latitude of the South Pole is 90°S, and the latitude of the North Pole is 90°N.
  • Statement: In Assam, the local time and the IST are identical.
    • False. IST is based on a central meridian for all of India. Assam’s local time, based on its specific eastern longitude, is actually ahead of IST.
  • Statement: Lines separating the time zones are identical with meridians of longitude.
    • False. Time zone lines often bend and are not perfectly straight because they are adjusted to follow the borders of countries.
  • Statement: The Equator is also a parallel of latitude.
    • True. The Equator is the main parallel of latitude, and its value is 0 degrees.

8. Question:

Solve the crossword below.

Answer:

  • Across
    • 1.SCALE
    • 4.GLOBE
    • 5.EQUATOR
    • 6.GREENWICH
    • 8.MAP
    • 10.LATITUDE
  • Down
    • 2.LONGITUDE
    • 3.COORDINATES
    • 6.GRID
    • 7.IST
    • 9.NORTHPOLE
    • 11.IDL (abbreviation for International Date Line)

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