9. Maps — our Companions
Complete solutions to the Exercise. Maharashtra State Board (Balbharati), Standard 5 EVS 1.
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Exercises
This has to be done in your own notebook, because the landforms differ from place to place. Here is a sample list and the way to draw one of them.
Sample list of landforms: a hill or small mountain near the village, a valley between two hills, a plateau, the plain along a river, a river bank, a lake or pond, and the low-lying land that fills with water in the rains.
Drawing a hill by the contour line method: decide the heights you will show — say 100 m, 200 m, 300 m and 400 m above sea-level. Mark the points that lie at each of these heights and join the points of the same height with one closed line. You will get closed curves placed one inside the other, the smallest at the top of the hill. Where the lines lie close together the slope is steep; where they are far apart the slope is gentle.
Tip: write the height on each contour line. That is what tells the reader how high the land is.
The word representing a landform is Mount (Mount Takmak — a mountain). It can be shown by a small triangle with the height written beside it, in the way the triangulation mark is used on Survey of India maps.
The word representing a landform is Island (Gharapuri Island). It can be shown as a small closed patch of land coloured green, with blue water drawn all around it.
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Remember the difference: a sign is a letter or a plain geometrical shape, while a symbol is a small drawing of the thing itself.
| Component | Suggested representation | Sign or symbol? |
|---|---|---|
| House | A small square with a triangle on top, drawn like a hut | Symbol |
| Hospital | A red cross, or the letter H inside a square | Sign |
| Factory | A small drawing of a shed with a chimney giving off smoke | Symbol |
| Park | A small drawing of a tree with a bench beside it, on a green patch | Symbol |
| Playground | A plain rectangle coloured light brown | Sign |
| Road | Two parallel straight lines running side by side | Sign |
| Hill | A small brown triangle with a shaded slope | Symbol |
| River | A wavy blue line that grows broader towards its mouth | Sign |
Note: whichever signs and symbols you choose, you must show them all together in the key or index of your map. Without a key the reader cannot understand what your map says.
In the index of the map, the lowest land has been shown in blue. This is wrong. In the layer tinting method, blue is kept for water bodies only — rivers, lakes and the sea. If the lowest land is also coloured blue, the reader cannot tell land from water.
The correct colour in its place would be green. In layer tinting the land just above sea-level is coloured dark green; as the height increases the colour changes to light green, then yellow, then orange and brown.