Captain Cook Charting our islands.

Today we were learning about how Captain Cook charted our islands.SJ May 2016 Captain Cook by Melanie Lovell Smith.

Captain Cook was an explorer that set sail and discovered New Zealand.He charted New Zealand using methods.

The first method to chart New Zealand was using a method called soundings.He used a rope called fathom to measure the depth of the sea floor.He knew that if the rope was a clean lead he would know that the seafloor was mostly rock.

The second method was called a running survey.New Zealand would take Cook 7 months.In those seven months he was charting New Zealand using a quadrant (a quadrant is used to measure the angle between the horizon and the sun.So he charted New Zealand by angles.

Captain Cook charted New Zealand using latitude and longitude.Longitude is based on Earth's rotation through 360 degrees which happens once every 24 hours.Every twelve hours equals 180 degrees or 15 degrees an hour.So that means Cook needed longitude and latitude to chart the islands of New Zealand.

Latitude and Longitude.

Mercury Bay

When Captain Cook was still in New Zealand he also made some detailed charts of Mercury Bay and River Thames.The dotted line shows where the endeavour had sailed.The numbers on the line is the recording of the depth of the sea.

My opinion of why maths were important to Cook was because he knew how to chart islands with maths,longitude and latitude.