4
$\begingroup$

Well i know that the distance between Moscow and London by km it's about 2,519 km and the distance between Moscow and London in my map by cm it's about 30.81 cm and the Scale for my map is 1 cm = 81.865 km but when i tried to measure the distance between other two cities for example between London and Berlin with my map scale the result was wrong so i think that's because the spherical of earth ???!!

Now i want to know how can i measure the distance between tow cities in the map also how can i know the scale of a map ?

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ Over a large area, the map has to distort distances because of the curvature of the earth. Different maps do it differently. On a small area, the error will be small. The parameter of interest is the ratio of the distance to the radius of the earth, so London to Berlin will be pretty close. $\endgroup$ Jun 24, 2013 at 19:39

1 Answer 1

4
$\begingroup$

The calculation is somewhat complex. A simplification is to assume that the Earth is a sphere and finding the great-circle distance. A more complex calculation instead uses an oblate spheroid as a closer approximation.

$\endgroup$
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .