Map Projections

Earth is round like a ball, but most maps are flat. Try to press an orange peel flat and it tears or stretches. The same thing happens when mapmakers draw the whole round Earth on a flat page: something always gets stretched or squeezed. A map projection is a way of turning the round Earth into a flat map. Every projection gets some things right and some things wrong. The Mercator projection was made in 1569 to help sailors. It keeps compass directions straight, but it makes places far from the equator look too big. On a Mercator map, Greenland looks about as big as Africa, but Africa is really about 14 times larger. Equal-area projections show the true size of each place, but they bend the shapes. Other projections are good for other jobs. Conic projections work well for places like the United States, and plane projections are often used to map the North Pole or the South Pole. Only a globe shows sizes, shapes, distances, and directions correctly all at the same time.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report