Physical Geography Review

REVIEW SHEET- PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY- EXAM 1

Resources: Lecture notes, PowerPoint slides, textbook, resources available online, and your Professor!

What to Study

-Lecture Notes

-All Slides posted on Blackboard

-Chapters 1-3

-Pay close attention to illustrations! There will be illustrations on the test

Shape of Earth

- Not perfectly round

o Oblate spheroid

o Poles= two points on earth’s surface where AXIS of rotation emerges

o Axis= imaginary straight line through the center of the earth around which the earth

rotates

The Four Major Earth Systems: what are they?

- Atmosphere

- Hydrosphere

- Lithosphere

- BioSphere

Geographic Grid

- Network of Parallels and Meridians used to fix location on the earth

Latitude

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Longitude

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Meridians

- North-south line on the Earth’s surface, connecting the Poles

Parallels

- East- West circle on the Earth’s surface, lying on a plane parallel to the equator

Equator

- Parallel of latitude lying midway between the earth’s poles: designated latitude 0degrees

Prime Meridian

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International Date Line

- Follows 180 th Meridian except through the Aleutian Islands, Alaska and island nation of Kiribati

- Move east across IDL, subtract a day, Move west across the IDL add a day

World Time Zones- How many are there?

- 24 Time zones

Approximately how

Daylight Savings Time: read the section in your textbook: why do we “save” and “spend” daylight?

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Map Scale (Large Scale/ Small Scale)

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Map Projections, Distortion (What does each preserve? Distort?)

Cylindrical; Mercator

Conic

Plane

Elliptical; Mollweide

Equal Area; Goodes

Great circle routes: what are they?

Electromagnetic Radiation: look over the two graphs in the slides carefully

Electromagnetic Spectrum

Radiation waves from the Sun and the Earth

Relationship energy wave and temperature

Solar Energy