NCERT Class 8 Social Science Exploring Society India and Beyond Part 2 Chapter 01 World Geography Some Glimpses PDF Download

Chapter 1: World Geography: Some Glimpses

The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man.

- Rabindranath Tagore

The Big Questions

1. What are the unique physical features of the continents?
2. Why do we need to understand world geography?
3. How do human actions trigger environmental issues?

[Figure 1.1: An image of the Earth 'stitched together' by scientists at NASA using minute data collected over several years, See in your textbook]

The Earth has long been revered as a mother by indigenous communities and personified in India as a living deity, often known as Bhudevi or Vasudha. Human lives are deeply connected to its many features; for instance, the distant Southern Indian Ocean influences the monsoon in the Gangetic Plains. From vast oceans to towering mountains and harsh deserts, humanity has long sought to understand the planet's wonders. Let's take a quick tour of our 'blue planet', our home, to give you a glimpse of a few of them.

Let's Explore

• What do you think each of the different colours in the map in Fig. 1.1 represents?
• Since this chapter is about world geography, we are concerned with physical maps. Physical maps have their own language that use colours -
  • Blue: water bodies (oceans, seas, lakes, rivers);
  • Green: plains;
  • Yellow/Brown: plateaus;
  • Dark brown: high mountains;
  • Light yellow: deserts;
  • White: ice and glaciers

Teacher's Note

When you look at a physical map, use the colour key to decode what you see. The colours are the map's language. If you see dark brown areas, those are mountains; green areas are plains. Before answering any question about a physical map, always check if you have the correct colour meaning for that particular map.

The Complexity of Mapping the Earth

The Earth is an oblate spheroid. When we draw a map, we try to show the Earth on a flat surface. Take an orange; imagine that it represents the Earth. Now peel it and lay the peel flat without tearing it. As you will discover, it is quite impossible to do so. This is why all maps have some distortion. The process of showing the Earth on a flat surface is called a map projection. Cartographers have made several attempts at creating accurate representative projections of the Earth. They use different methods to draw the world. Some maps show the right shapes of countries but wrong sizes, while others show the right sizes but distorted shapes.

Every map is a compromise. To understand the world fairly, we must look at multiple projections, not just one. Given below are two projections.

Teacher's Note

Remember that no single map is perfectly accurate. Every map trades off something: either shape, size, or distance gets distorted. If a test question shows you only one map, be careful about drawing conclusions about actual sizes or distances. Always ask yourself: which projection is this, and what does it distort?

[Figure 1.2 (1): The Mercator Projection - Preserves shape and direction, making it useful for navigation. However, it greatly distorts size near the poles (e.g., Greenland looks as big as Africa), See in your textbook]

[Figure 1.2 (2): Robinson Projection - A compromise map that balances size and shape distortions, giving a more visually pleasing 'realistic' world map, See in your textbook]

Don't Miss Out

Look at the size of Greenland compared to India in both the maps. In the Mercator Projection Greenland looks larger than India whereas in fact it is smaller.

Key Points

• The Earth is an oblate spheroid, so all flat maps must distort either shape, size, or direction when representing it.
• Physical maps use colours to show different features: blue for water, green for plains, brown shades for mountains, yellow for deserts, and white for ice.
• Different map projections (like Mercator and Robinson) make different choices about what to preserve and what to distort, so you should compare multiple projections to understand the world fairly.

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