South-up map orientation is the orientation of a map with south up, at the top of the map, amounting to a 180-degree rotation of the map from the standard convention of north-up. Maps in this orientation are sometimes called upside down maps or reversed maps.[ citation needed ]
Other maps with non-standard orientation include T and O maps, polar maps, and Dymaxion maps.
Research suggests that north-south positions on maps have psychological consequences. In general, north is associated with richer people, more expensive real estate, and higher altitude, while south is associated with poorer people, cheaper prices, and lower altitude (the "north-south bias"). When participants were presented with south-up oriented maps, this north-south bias disappeared. [2]
Researchers posit that the observed association between map-position and goodness/badness (north=good; south=bad) is caused by the combination of
Common English idioms support the notion that many English speakers conflate or associate north with up and south with down (e.g. "heading up north", "down south", Down Under), a conflation that can only be understood as learned by repeated exposure to a particular map-orientation convention (i.e. north put at the top of maps). Related idioms used in popular song lyrics provide further evidence for the pervasiveness of "north-south bias" among English speakers, in particular with regard to wealth. Examples include using "Uptown" to mean "high class or rich" (as in "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel), or using "Downtown" to convey lower socioeconomic status (as in "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" by Jim Croce). [4]
Cultural diversity and media literacy educators use south-up oriented world maps to help students viscerally experience the frequently disorienting effect of seeing something familiar from a different perspective. Having students consider the privileged position given to the Northern hemisphere (especially Europe and North America) on most world maps can help students confront their more general potential for culturally biased perceptions. [5]
Throughout history, maps have been made with varied orientations, and reversing the orientation of maps is technically very easy to do. As such, some cartographers maintain that the issue of south-up map orientation is itself trivial. More noteworthy than the technical matter of orientation, per se, is the history of explicitly using south-up map orientation as a political statement, that is, creating south-up oriented maps with the express rationale of reacting to the north-up oriented world maps that have dominated map publication during the modern age.
The history of south-up map orientation as political statement can be traced back to the early 1900s. Joaquín Torres García, a Uruguayan modernist painter, created one of the first maps to make a political statement related to north-south map positions entitled "América Invertida". "Torres-García placed the South Pole at the top of the earth, thereby suggesting a visual affirmation of the importance of the (South American) continent." [6] [7]
A popular example of a south-up oriented map designed as a political statement is "McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World" (1979). An insert on this map explains that the Australian, Stuart McArthur, sought to confront "the perpetual onslaught of 'downunder' jokes—implications from Northern nations that the height of a country's prestige is determined by its equivalent spatial location on a conventional map of the world". [8] McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World (1979) has sold over 350,000 copies to date.
South-up maps are commonly available as novelties or sociopolitical statements in southern hemisphere locales, particularly Australia. [9] A south-up oriented world map appears in episode "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail" of The West Wing , and issues of cultural bias are discussed in relation to it. The cartoon strip Mafalda by Argentine cartoonist Quino once posed the question "Why are we down?" American cartoonist Leo Cullum published a cartoon in The New Yorker titled, "Happy penguin looking at upside-down globe; Antarctica is on top" (April 20, 1992).
The computer strategy game Neocolonialism developed by Esther Alter uses a south-up map, with the developer stating it is intended to "evoke discomfort" and to "exemplify the north-south dichotomy of the world, wherein the southern hemisphere is generally poorer than the northern hemisphere." [10]
Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
The Gall–Peters projection is a rectangular, equal-area map projection. Like all equal-area projections, it distorts most shapes. It is a cylindrical equal-area projection with latitudes 45° north and south as the regions on the map that have no distortion. The projection is named after James Gall and Arno Peters.
A map is a symbolic depiction of relationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or another durable medium, or may be displayed on a programmable medium such as a computer screen. Some maps change interactively. Although maps are commonly used to depict geography, they may represent any space, real or fictional. The subject being mapped may be two-dimensional, such as Earth's surface; three-dimensional, such as Earth's interior; or may even be from an abstract space of any dimension.
The Mercator projection is a conformal cylindrical map projection first presented by Flemish geographer and mapmaker Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In the 18th century, it became the standard map projection for navigation due to its property of representing rhumb lines as straight lines. When applied to world maps, the Mercator projection inflates the size of lands the further they are from the equator. Therefore, landmasses such as Greenland and Antarctica appear far larger than they actually are relative to landmasses near the equator. Nowadays the Mercator projection is widely used because, aside from marine navigation, it is well suited for internet web maps.
In cartography, a map projection is any of a broad set of transformations employed to represent the curved two-dimensional surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitude, of locations from the surface of the globe are transformed to coordinates on a plane. Projection is a necessary step in creating a two-dimensional map and is one of the essential elements of cartography.
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.
A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat plate and a gnomon, which casts a shadow onto the dial. As the Sun appears to move through the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines, which are marked on the dial to indicate the time of day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, though a single point or nodus may be used. The gnomon casts a broad shadow; the shadow of the style shows the time. The gnomon may be a rod, wire, or elaborately decorated metal casting. The style must be parallel to the axis of the Earth's rotation for the sundial to be accurate throughout the year. The style's angle from horizontal is equal to the sundial's geographical latitude.
In mathematics, a stereographic projection is a perspective projection of the sphere, through a specific point on the sphere, onto a plane perpendicular to the diameter through the point. It is a smooth, bijective function from the entire sphere except the center of projection to the entire plane. It maps circles on the sphere to circles or lines on the plane, and is conformal, meaning that it preserves angles at which curves meet and thus locally approximately preserves shapes. It is neither isometric nor equiareal.
The Dymaxion map projection, also called the Fuller projection, is a kind of polyhedral map projection of the Earth's surface onto the unfolded net of an icosahedron. The resulting map is heavily interrupted in order to reduce shape and size distortion compared to other world maps, but the interruptions are chosen to lie in the ocean.
A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but, unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model globe of Earth is called a terrestrial globe. A model globe of the celestial sphere is called a celestial globe.
Rollout photography, a type of peripheral photography, is a process used to create a two-dimensional photographic image of a three-dimensional object. This process is the photographic equivalent of a cylindrical map projection in cartography. It is used predominantly for the projection of images of cylindrical objects such as vases or ceramic vessels. The objective of this process is to present to the observer a planar representation of the object's characteristics, most notably the illustrations or artwork extant on the outside surfaces of such vessels. This planar representation is captured using photographic imaging techniques.
The Hobo–Dyer map projection is a normal cylindrical equal-area projection, with standard parallels at 37.5° north and south of the equator. The map was commissioned in 2002 by Bob Abramms and Howard Bronstein of ODT Inc. and drafted by cartographer Mick Dyer, as a modification of the 1910 Behrmann projection. The name Hobo–Dyer is derived from Bronstein and Abramms's first names and Dyer's surname.
The Goode homolosine projection is a pseudocylindrical, equal-area, composite map projection used for world maps. Normally it is presented with multiple interruptions, most commonly of the major oceans. Its equal-area property makes it useful for presenting spatial distribution of phenomena.
The Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection is a particular mapping from a sphere to a disk. It accurately represents area in all regions of the sphere, but it does not accurately represent angles. It is named for the Swiss mathematician Johann Heinrich Lambert, who announced it in 1772. "Zenithal" being synonymous with "azimuthal", the projection is also known as the Lambert zenithal equal-area projection.
Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape. The term "portrait orientation" comes from visual art terminology and describes the dimensions used to capture a person's face and upper body in a picture; in such images, the height of the display area is greater than the width. The term "landscape orientation" also reflects visual art terminology, where pictures with more width than height are needed to fully capture the horizon within an artist's view.
The near side of the Moon is the lunar hemisphere that always faces towards Earth, opposite to the far side. Only one side of the Moon is visible from Earth because the Moon rotates on its axis at the same rate that the Moon orbits the Earth—a situation known as tidal locking.
The Peirce quincuncial projection is the conformal map projection from the sphere to an unfolded square dihedron, developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in 1879. Each octant projects onto an isosceles right triangle, and these are arranged into a square. The name quincuncial refers to this arrangement: the north pole at the center and quarters of the south pole in the corners form a quincunx pattern like the pips on the five face of a traditional die. The projection has the distinctive property that it forms a seamless square tiling of the plane, conformal except at four singular points along the equator.
Sun path, sometimes also called day arc, refers to the daily and seasonal arc-like path that the Sun appears to follow across the sky as the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. The Sun's path affects the length of daytime experienced and amount of daylight received along a certain latitude during a given season.
In cartography, the normal cylindrical equal-area projection is a family of normal cylindrical, equal-area map projections.
Cartographic propaganda is a map created with the goal of achieving a result similar to traditional propaganda. The map can be outright falsified, or created using subjectivity with the goal of persuasion. The idea that maps are subjective is not new; cartographers refer to maps as a human-subjective product and some view cartography as an "industry, which packages and markets spatial knowledge" or as a communicative device distorted by human subjectivity. However, cartographic propaganda is widely successful because maps are often presented as a miniature model of reality, and it is a rare occurrence that a map is referred to as a distorted model, which sometimes can "lie" and contain items that are completely different from reality. Because the word propaganda has become a pejorative, it has been suggested that mapmaking of this kind should be described as "persuasive cartography", defined as maps intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs – to send a message – rather than to communicate geographic information.