In “The Beauty of Physics: Patterns, Principles, and Perspectives,” A. R. P. Rau goes over the history of maps, and goes into detail about how versatile and broad of a word map really is. It turns out that maps appear in human history, mathematics, and physics.
This was the first result when I searched “Map” on Google Images
Upon their travel of the unknown world, early explorers would make maps tracking their path. As news of these knowledgeable maps spread, they became valued and fought over by kings and the rich. Just like humans, animals also use a keen sense of direction to make mental maps of their paths, such as bees, homing pigeons, monarch butterflies, and long-distance migratory-birds. Across years and species maps are utilized, and they still are today. For example, GPS systems can be called modern maps. From the depths of the Amazon rainforest, to the middle of the Sahara Desert, someone can be traced using a modern day GPS location tracker to relay coordinates.
I mentioned that “map” is a very versatile word. Not only in human history, but also in mathematics do maps show up. In the example of infinite iterations, many triangles continually placed on top of one another, while getting smaller, produce fractal patterns that represent the mathematical phenomena of fractals. These mathematical fractals are also seen in nature, but are not always infinite due to biology. Another example of maps in math is in graphing. Let’s say that we are trying to graph points x and y on a 2-dimensional x,y plane. We can map that like this, where x=1 and y=2:
When we want to graph x,y,z on a 3-dimensional plane we can also do that, as shown here, where x is the red line, y is the red line, and z is the blue line:
Lastly, Rue talks about how maps are apparent in physics. To be honest, I’m not a science person and really had no idea what this last section of the article was talking about, but I have a feeling it will relate to class on Tuesday which will answer some of my questions.