Sarah Helble
Laura McGough
Megan Meiklejohn
Section 8, Monday 2:30
Creating a map projection of our home towns
•Create maps
•Finding Coordinates
•UTM Coordinates
•State Plane Coordinates
•Identify distortions and preservations on the map
Go to Angel. Open Lessons for GEOG 121. Go to
Projects. Scroll down and select Project 1. Follow along
with the project template as we present it.
Example:
Your Name
Suggested Source:
Google Earth. http://earth.google.com/index.html
~Type in your home town and state in the locator bar
*Google Earth will zoom in to your town
~Move your mouse cursor off to the left hand side of the
screen and Google Earth should display the coordinates on
the bottom of the screen.
Note the coordinates to your town on a scrap piece of paper, make sure
you include all three forms: degree, minutes, seconds; decimal degrees;
and UTM coordinates. To do this, go to Tools and click “Options…” Under
the 3D View tab choose the appropriate option in the Show Lat/Long
section. Click Apply Settings and view coordinates at the bottom of screen.
Go to http://projections.mgis.psu.edu
Choose map projection. Adjust the projection center and
bounding coordinates as desired. Enter home town coordinates
in decimal degrees and town name to plot location of town on
map.
Copy and save map.
On Frontpage or Word insert map. Above the map
heading should be the class, project number and name,
and your name. Below the map…
*Identify the map projection you selected.
*Specify the geographic coordinates of the projection center or the
bounding coordinates if you chose to map only a portion of the globe.
*State which geometric properties of the globe (i.e., sizes, shapes,
distances, and directions) are preserved, and which are distorted.
This will depend on the type of projection you chose. Refer to class
notes and text to identify the distortions related to your map projection.
*Specify the Web site or other software you used to create the map
projection. (i.e., http://projections.mgis.psu.edu)
*Write a few sentences relating what you learned in the process of
creating the map.
Next record your coordinates as shown in the project template:
Geographic Coordinates
The place name shown on the map above represents the location of my home town.
The geographic coordinates of my home town are:
Latitude: __° __' __" N, Longitude: ___° __' __" W
UTM Coordinates
The UTM coordinates (NAD83) of my home town are:
Easting: __________ meters, Northing: __________ meters, Zone: __________
State Plane Coordinates
The State Plane coordinates (NAD83) of my home town are:
Easting: __________ meters, Northing: __________ meters, Zone: __________
To find the State Plane Coordinates…
State Plane Coordinates can be found at:
National Geodetic Survey (2002) SPC Utilities http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/spc.html
If you did not get the UTM Coordinates from Google Earth, they can be found at
National Geodetic Survey (2002) UTM Utilities http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/utm.html
To use the websites, scroll down to Interactive Conversions.
Select Latitude/Longitude -> SPC or UTM depending on the site. Enter the
Latitude and Longitude in the degrees, minutes, seconds format. Make sure
you at least put a decimal point after the numbers, and if Longitude is under
100° put a 0 in front of the number.
Example:
Latitude: 40°07’50.98” N Longitude: 75°08’08.11” W
should be entered as
Latitude: N400750.98
Longitude: W0750808.11
After each set of coordinates, describe the coordinate
system in your own words. For the UTM coordinate
system explain what NAD83 means and how it differs from
NAD27
Then compare and contrast the three coordinate systems
in your own words.
Finally be sure to list your sources and the websites which
you used.
And lastly, save all of this to Frontpage and upload onto your website.
If you need to find any of these websites and/or sample projects,
go to Missy’s website (www.personal.psu.edu/myr100) or visit our
personal pages for the powerpoint:
www.personal.psu.edu/sjh5036/
www.personal.psu.edu/mmm5000/
www.personal.psu.edu/lmm5023
The End.