Class 11 Geography as a Discipline: cheat sheet

CBSE Social Science. What geography studies and asks, its two approaches, its many branches and the modern tools it uses.

Key ideas

Geography is the description of the earth: it studies how physical and cultural features differ from place to place (areal differentiation).
It asks three questions: what (patterns), where (distribution) and why (cause and effect); the “why” made it a science.
Geography is a discipline of synthesis: it draws on many natural and social sciences and ties them together over space, as history does over time.
The systematic approach studies one phenomenon across the world; the regional approach studies all phenomena of one region together.
Physical geography studies four realms: lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
Time is the “fourth dimension”: features change over time, and distance can be stated as travel time.
Modern tools such as GIS, GPS, remote sensing and computer cartography handle large data and map places accurately.

First used the word geography	Eratosthenes (geo = earth, graphos = description)
Systematic approach	Alexander von Humboldt
Regional approach	Karl Ritter
Branch and its sister science	climatology – meteorology; soil geography – pedology; population geography – demography; geomorphology – geology
Distance as time	hours = distance ÷ speed (1,500 km by plane at 750 km/h = 2 hours)
Physical or cultural?	plain, plateau, river: physical; port, road, market: cultural

Place A is 6,000 km from place B. How many hours is that by a train averaging 125 km/h, and by a plane at 750 km/h?

Working: 6,000 ÷ 125; 6,000 ÷ 750

Answer: 48 hours by train; 8 hours by plane

Revise with this page, then practise: every Geography as a Discipline sheet in the app is new, with an answer key and working.

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