How are maps scaled?
The Earth’s landscape has to be scaled down proportionally so that the resulting map fits onto a piece of paper or a computer screen that is of a manageable size, and yet shows an appropriate level of detail. Different map scales suit different needs. One commonly used map scale is 1:24,000. A map scale is a ratio that indicates that one unit of measure on a map is equivalent to 24,000 units on the ground (in this example). So, 1 inch measured on a 1:24,000-scale map will equal 24,000 inches on the ground (or 2000 feet). On a 1:100,000 scale map, 1 cm represents 100,000 cm (that’s 10 km) in the real world. Since the ratio 1/100,000 is a smaller number than the ratio 1/24,000, a 1:100,000 map is a smaller scale than a 1:24,000 map. The smaller the scale, the more real-world real estate a square inch (or any unit of measure) represents.
