Topographic Map Skills: Bearings

Learning Objective: To understand how to work out the direction and/or bearing of one location to/from another location.

Success Criteria

By the end of the lesson, you should be able to:

Use a protractor and/or directions to work out the location of one place to and/or from another.
Describe the location of one place to/from another using positional language.

Recap on Directions!

It is important to realise that directions are only good for general use and are generally not accurate enough for things like shipping and aircraft navigation. As the diagram below shows, it often occurs that there is no exact direction that answers a question.

In the diagram shown here, compass direction lines have been drawn over the top of a series of locations, shown by the dots A to F. You can see that the direction:

From A to B is clearly South (S)
From A to C is clearly Southwest (SW)
From A to D is clearly South-Southwest (SSW)

However, the direction A to E is not covered by any of the directions we have available to us, but since it is obviously not West, we would settle for WSW as our answer. If asked the direction from A to F, either SW or WSW would have to be accepted.

You might find in the questions on the worksheet that, sometimes, there is no 'exact' direction. Just use your best judgement and write what's best in these cases.

Task 1

You are to complete the following worksheet to the right. Glue into your workbook once completed.

8 GEO Direction and Bearing Worksheet 1

Student worksheet (teachers to print).

Bearings

It should be clear by now that directions are not exact in many cases, so in situations like the navigation of ships and aircraft, bearings (often called 'headings') are used. A bearing is expressed in degrees, which is indicated by a very small circle next to the number.

For example, 45 degrees is written as: 45o

Obviously, bearings and directions are related, and the diagram here shows that there are bearings that go with the main direction points.

These are:

N = 0o NE = 45o E = 90o SE = 135o

S = 180o SW = 225o W = 270o NW = 315o

The best way to measure bearings is with a 360-degree protractor, like the one shown below. The procedure for using it is as follow:

Task 2

You are to complete the following worksheet to the right. Glue into your workbook once completed.

Bearings and Direction Exercise 2 worksheet

Student worksheet (teachers to print).

Task 3: Bearings Extension

Bearings-Activity-1.pdf

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