Monday, September 27, 2010

3 Interesting Maps....

This interesting map is found on the "Downtown Voices Coalition" website in the article "U.S. population and growth trends by county, 1970-2030". This map illustrates the population density for every county across the United States; each block seen on the map represents a county, and the height of the blocks refer to the population density of counties in year 2000. I find this map interesting because it is 3D; further, since areas with high population densities tend to have a lot more settlements, the height of blocks on the map gives me a preliminary sense of how urban and populated the area is. Those blocks also remind me of skyscrapers that may be in the area.


This map is found on the "Cartography and Geographic Information Systems Laboratory" web page, "Maps Page on Australia". This odd looking map basically gives viewers a sense of how big Australia is when compared to Europe. I find it interesting because the map can actually be practical for people who don't know how large Australia is, since the continent is on its own in the Antarctic Ocean. By overlapping the border of Australia onto a map of Europe, people would know how big Australia's land mass is in relation to Europe.


This map is found on a website called "Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2", in the article "Your Brain As a Map". According to the author, this map was designed by New Zealand designers and it was made to map out the neural regions of the brain. I find the notion of this map very interesting, this is because, similar to a newly discovered island, the human brain is not yet fully understood by human, and there are still a lot of areas in the brain where we can explore on. In addition, scientists call different parts of the brain "regions" as if they are different provinces in a country.This brain map brings novelty to map reading; yet it preserves the basic principles of the process.