Chapter 6: Expanding Horizons "Amerigo Vespucci"

Introduction
Students have read that Columbus truly believed he had discovered a new route to Asia. It was difficult either to prove or disprove this at the time. Yet another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, suggested that Columbus had discovered a "New World," and a German mapmaker later made Vespucci famous.

Lesson Description
Students will go to the Amerigo Vespucci Web site. They will then answer four questions about what they have read. Students are then asked to prepare an explorers' math problem.

Instructional Objectives
1. Students will learn more about the life of Amerigo Vespucci and how the Americas were named for him.
2. Students will analyze whether or not Vespucci is rightfully credited in the naming of the Americas.

Student Web Activity Answers
1. He studied with Michelangelo.
2. He used his observations of the conjunction of Mars and the moon to calculate his longitude, or how far west he had sailed.
3. A German mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller read accounts of Vespucci's travels and in his honor named the newly discovered lands to the west "America" on a new map. Using new printing techniques, he made and sold a thousand copies of the map across Europe, and the name for the continents was established.
4. Students' answers will vary. Some may cite the fact that Vespucci was the person who first realized that Columbus had not found India but an unknown continent instead. Others may feel that Columbus was the first European who recorded seeing the "new" lands, so the Americas should be named for him.

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