Lab 1

Map One

I find this 17th century map on the webpage: http://www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/News/BOOKS-%26-MANUSCRIPTS/2011-News-Archive/Beautiful-17th-century-map-shows-collectors-the-way-forward-next-week/5866.page. When I saw this map, I was immediately attracted by its beauty and delicacy of craftsmanship. This map is a double-hemispherical world map, dating to 1670. We can find images of the seasons, the zodiac and the elements, all combined within four vignettes at the corners. All major continents except for Antarctica are shown on the map. One of the remarkable things is that California is presented as an island beside North America. A part of Australia is shown on the map and New Zealand is indicated by a stroke of the coastline. Japan is there with an exaggerated Hokkaido on the map. Although there are certain flaws in the map compared with modern maps of the world, given that there was certain limitation of technology in the late 17th century, this map is surprisingly accurate. It is really interesting to find how smart ancient people are through their masterpieces.

Map Two

I find the map of world night lights on the webpage:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Night_Lights_Map.jpg.  This map is taken from a satellite and it shows how lights are distributed at night around the world. We can see from the picture that parts of the world like the US, Europe and East Asia, the light intensity is much stronger than the rest of the world. Some people indicate that there is a proportional relationship between light intensity and economic activities as those areas with greater light intensity are more economically developed than other places with less light intensity. It is very interesting to know that we can use such a simple map to measure economic activities.

Map 3

This is the map of soccer clubs which are attending the 2012-2013 UEFA Champions League. The link of the map is here: http://billsportsmaps.com/?category_name=uefa-champions-league. This map shows what the 32 teams are and where they are located. Clubs with larger logos on the map are more likely to get this year's champion based on people's prediction in general.  We can see that two countries have the largest number of representative teams and the countries are England and Spain. It indicates that these two countries' national leagues are pretty competitive and their soccer culture is prevailing. In fact, their national soccer teams are also very strong in the world. Spain just got the Euro Cup this year. Countries, such as Germany and Portugal, which have three representatives, also have strong national soccer teams. One thing remarkable is that clubs from East Europe are much fewer than those from West Europe, indicating the difference between the strength of soccer clubs in the two regions. It is really interesting to see the map could have so many implications on the soccer culture in Europe.