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Getting to know the larger features of the globe

(You may want to do each section of this page at a separate time.)

The largest land masses are the continents:

bulletFind Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South America, Antarctica. (more about this later)
bulletAdd some regional maps to your map collection. Try to locate a map of each continent. You probably won't have to look further than your textbooks to do this. Make a note of the page numbers.

 

A land mass that has water on three sides is called a peninsula. This term comes from a Latin word, meaning "almost an island."
bulletFind Italy, Korea, Florida, and Baja California--all are peninsulas

Most of the earth is covered with water. Areas of this water are oceans, gulfs, lakes, seas, and rivers.

bulletFind the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
bulletFind the Mediterranean, Aegean and Red Seas
bulletFind the Gulf of Mexico
bulletFind the Nile, Mississippi, Amazon, and Zaire (called Congo on some maps) Rivers.

 

Some maps indicate the elevation of certain areas--that is, they show where the mountains are. They also may show areas of sparse vegetation and low precipitation--that is, they show where the deserts are.
bulletFind the Alps, Himalayan, Andes, and Appalachian mountains
bulletFind the Sahara and Gobi deserts

 

The globe is a sphere (ball); half of a sphere is a hemisphere.

The half of the globe containing the American continents is the Western Hemisphere, and sometimes is called "The New World." The half containing Africa, Asia and Europe is the Eastern Hemisphere, also called the "Old World."

The globe also can be divided into Northern and Southern hemispheres as well.

bulletLook at some of the locations you found earlier in this exercise. Which hemispheres (N/S, E/W) apply to them? (Remember, there are two answers for each.)