* Unit 1: Humans,

their needs and the

planet
In this unit we will begin to look at how people
live their lives and what they need to live happy
lives.
To start with, take 5 minutes to write down what
do you think that people need in order to live
happy lives starting from the most important to
the least important.

Human lives and

human needs
From the previous chart we can reach
two important conclusions:

Conclusion 1: People never satisfy all

their needs, their needs are endless.
 Conclusion 2: People need both
material things as well as social
relationships to live happy lives.
The first and most important social relationship of
all people is with their family.
Family is the first social group noted in history.
Although its form has changed a lot throughout
history it remains a very important social institution
with a very important role for its members.
Some of families’ main functions:
• physical care of all members
• being responsible for children, raising and
preparing them for adulthood
• Providing food, shelter, safety
(Can you think of others?)

Social relationships:
Family
Friends, colleagues and work life, civil society,
the state

Social relationships:
Society
Natural goods: Goods that people use that are
found free in nature (sun, water etc).
So in order to live well we rely first of all on
what we can get from our wonderful planet.
How did humans end up using up all of the
planet’s resources? One of the first natural
sciences that was useful in this process, along
with physics and mathematics was geography.

Material things: natural

goods and the planet
Humans have been using planet resources to survive and
develop throughout history.
When the resources of an area would end or were not
enough for survival humans moved and spread all over the
planet in search of resources and comfortable living
conditions.
This movement and the exploration of the planet was
made possible by the use of maps and the tool of
geographic location.
In order to travel easily and safely and to be able to
identify the position of all things on the planet people
divided the globe into smaller parts and in this way they
developed the tool of geographic coordinates.
VIDEO 1 VIDEO 2

* Discovering the
planet
* Scientists divided the earth’s surface
using parallels and meridians. These
lines help us define the position of
any point with its geographic
coordinates, longitude and latitude.
* But first let’s have a look at the
points of the compass.

*Using Maps I: Geographic

location and coordinates
* Meridians are straight lines connecting the North to
the South pole.
* They are used to show how many degrees east or west
a point lies from the first meridian. So they give us the
longitude of any point on the earth’s surface.
* Point zero and the first meridian passes through
Greenwich in London, UK.
* Each point of any meridian has the same
longitude.
* We use E for east and W for West.
* Longitude is measured in angles (because of the
planet’s sphere shape).
* Maximum longitude is 180°.

* Meridians, longitude
(east or west)
* Parallels are straight lines vertical to the earth’s axis
and parallel to the equator.
* They are used to show how north or west any point is
from the Equator. So they give us the latitude of any
point.
* We measure latitude from the equator and we use N
for north and S for south.
* All points on the circles parallel to the equator
(not of the same length as the meridian) have the
same latitude.
• Also measured in degrees.
• Latitude goes up to a maximum 90° because it is
measured from the equator.

* Parallels, latitude
(north or south)
* Observe the following map of Greece and
provide the geographic location of Athens,
Thessaloniki, Patra and Ioannina.

* Exercise 1
* Observe the following map and provide the
geographic coordinates for USA, Russia and
China.
Since these are countries and not points, longitude
and latitude will not be numbers but ranges (for
example, 30 ° to 45 °E).

* Exercise 2
* Maps provide many kinds of information
besides geographical location.
* a) Describe the 5 most common things you find
in maps.
* b) Provide three examples of how you
personally have used a map.

* Using Maps II
1) Political maps: They give information about
the man-made environment (cities, states,
roads, airports etc)
2) Geomorphological maps: They provide
information about the natural environment
(continents, mountains, seas, plains etc)
3) Thematic maps: They give us information
about one particular phenomenon or theme
(population, temperature, wind levels,
income, number of iphone holders etc)

Map categories
Temperature in Europe
Global income
 Map scales
* We can use maps to measure distance between
places.
* For that we use the scale provided.
* We use a ruler to measure the distance in
centimeters, and multiply by the scale.

* Using maps to
estimate distance
Work in pairs to calculate the distance between
Athens and Thessaloniki, Patra and Ioannina, Edessa
to Ksanthi, using the following map. (Note: Results
may seem odd, because this is not the map it is a
picture of a map so its dimensions may have
changed).

* exercise
The owner of an aluminum company is
considering of places to build its factory. What
kind of map should he/she examine? What type
of information will be useful to them?
(Aluminum is produced from bauxite. The
extraction of bauxite requires a lot of electric
power, one factory consumes electricity as a
small town)

Using maps in
economic activity
The owner should look for the following king of
information:
- Which areas are rich in bauxite deposits, so that
the extraction is easier?
- Which of those areas are close to power plants so
electricity will be cheaper?
- Whichof those areas are close to other industrial
zones so that the factory can buy its supplies
cheaply?
- Which of those areas are well connected to the
road network so that other supplies arrive cheaply?
- Which ofthose areas are close to the sea, so that
shipping and trading of aluminum is easy and
cheap?
* Observe the following map. Which location
seems the most suitable to build an aluminum
factory?

* exercise 1