Map scale

Ages 9 to 12 Read alone or together · about 25 minutes

Read together

A map is smaller than the real place. The scale tells how much smaller.

A scale of 1 cm to 1 km means 1 centimetre on the map is 1 kilometre in real life.

Do it

1. Draw a map of your street or room to scale: decide 1 cm is 1 metre, and measure.
2. Mark the front door, the table and the window.
3. Use a string and the scale to find a real distance on a printed map.
4. Compare two maps: a country and a city. Which shows more detail?

Talk about it

• How far is it in real life?
• Why do bigger areas show less detail?

For the grown-up

Scale is ratio in action. A small-scale map covers a large area with little detail; a large-scale map covers a small area in detail.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• United States Geological Survey, educational pages on map scale
• Monmonier, M., How to Lie with Maps (University of Chicago Press, 3rd edition, 2018)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.