Most classrooms usually have a wall-size rectangular flat map of the world to help students with their geography lessons. Unless we believe the flat-earthers, a flat map of a round planet is not the correct way to depict it. But if you are interested in seeing an accurate depiction of the planet, it's best to stick with a globe. If we leave the globe aside, all maps of the world are drawn flat. Each comes with trade-offs, and cartographers make projection decisions based on the particular tasks at hand. In the end, there's not "right" map projection. The Mercator distorts size to preserve shape.įor a more accurate view of land area look at the Gall-Peters projection, which preserves area while distorting shape. These circles are all the same size on the globe. To solve this problem, mathematicians and cartographers have developed a huge library of representations of the globe, each distorting a certain attribute and preserving others.įor instance, the Mercator projection preserves the shape of countries while distorting the size, especially near the north and south pole. There is no one way of projecting the curved surface of the Earth onto a flat sheet that does not cause some distortion, and there is no one projection that is. My struggle to make a flat map out of the plastic globe is indicative of a challenge mapmakers have faced for centuries: It is mathematically impossible to translate the surface of a sphere onto a plane without some form of distortion. I cut open a plastic globe to understand just what it takes to turn a sphere into something flat: Maps are flat representations of our spherical planet.
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