Lab 1: Three maps

This map is from a lecture slide (week 2, p.10). This breathtaking world map conveys the population information for every country. The countries with larger populations have larger territories on the map and shrink the size of adjacent countries. Thus China is the largest one in this map as having the world's number one population. In contrast, although Russia actually owns the largest territory in the world, she was helplessly shrunk to a line near the North Pole.

Actually, I just saw this picture this morning. At first, I found this map interesting because it displays the demographics in an unexpected way, which I bet triggered all students' curiosity. However, I felt worried and sad for China later on due to her population-explosion dilemma. Few people can image the low GDP per capital of China. China has worked hard for years to become the world's second economy. However, the unprecedented, huge population draws the GDP per capital below the world's average. China's figure in a real life map looks like a vibrant rooster, but now on this map China looks like a nuclear radiated chicken. India meets the same situation as China, and some other countries meet the totally opposite situation--their population decreases harshly and the territories were shrunk in this map. Population inequality means resource inequality and if humans cannot solve this problem, it will be a serious issue for the world instead of only for a single country. 

 Japan's nuclear power plant map is from http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-02.html. This Thematic map is only about the locations of nuclear power plants in Japan. All these nuclear power plants are located along the coastline because reactors need endless, free, cooling substance: water. From the map we can also see that Japanese scientists mastered both technologies of producing nuclear power: Boiling Water Reactor and Pressurized Water Reactors. However, the Fukushima catastrophe still happened in 2011 due to the earthquake. The damage to the environment is immeasurable because radical substances polluted sea water and flowed to Korea, China and many other countries. After that, other countries either examined the old reactors or suspended and changed the reactor expanding plans. However, humans need a solution to the energy problem. Across the sea, the US has many kinds of methods to produce electricity owing to her abundant natural resources. However, Japan is not only a population-explosive country as shown in figure one but also a country with a natural resources shortage and these intensive plants show the high need of energy in Japan. What is worse, Japan lays on the Ring of Fire. Therefore Japan should not take so many risks in operating nuclear plants near an earthquake spot. Instead, they should pay more attention in how to fully utilize their rich resources like fish and woods.

This Old Map of the World from the 1500's comes from http://www.sonofthesouth.net/revolutionary-war/maps/old-map-world.htm. The map nicely describes the Western world around 16th century. Due to the Europeans' economic activities, the map is centered at the Atlantic Ocean. There are also some huge sail ships and some extraordinary sea creatures and monsters. Perhaps old Europeans believed these monsters were the culprits of shipwrecks, while most of the time the shipwrecks happened because of low level navigational technology. At that time people had already discovered many rivers, lakes and mountains in America, Europe and Africa, and they also depicted some unique, local animals, such as a lizard and an alligator in America. Because people just found the "new world", people still kept the habit of recording new things. However, sometimes people would like to predict the unknowns. Therefore the most interesting story from this map is that we could not only witness the great geographical discoveries at that age, like the discoveries of America and India, but also the attitude of these old people toward the unknown. For example, people who drafted this map obviously did not go to the South Pole in person, but they put some legendary animals like a unicorn and a flying lion among mountains. Nowadays, with the development of technology people seemingly discover more and more areas; however, people meet more and more unknowns as well. The knowledge and technology we use today may be ridiculous in the future just like these imaginary animals we see today.