By Prisha Goyal
According to the National Ocean Service, the Earth is an irregularly shaped ellipsoid. But
the world maps you see in classrooms or books are flat. And that’s where the problem
begins. You can’t flatten something that’s round without distorting the image in some
way.
the world maps you see in classrooms or books are flat. And that’s where the problem
begins. You can’t flatten something that’s round without distorting the image in some
way.
The most famous map projection is the Mercator Projection, made by Gerardus
Mercator in 1569. It was mainly created for nautical navigation, and it was a
breakthrough in that field because a straight line on the map corresponded to a
constant compass direction, which made navigation easier for sailors. But though it
was great for navigation, it wasn’t so great at representing the actual size of countries
closer to the poles. Greenland looks bigger than Africa in the projection, but in fact,
Greenland is fourteen times smaller. Another map projection is the Gall-Peters
projection, which shows the true proportion of countries to one another, but the
continents are pretty…stretched. The most accurate map projection is the AuthaGraph
World Map, designed by Hajime Narukawa in 1999, since all the continents and oceans
are quite proportional. But it’s not used that widely because the Mercator Projection is
easier to read and understand.
was great for navigation, it wasn’t so great at representing the actual size of countries
closer to the poles. Greenland looks bigger than Africa in the projection, but in fact,
Greenland is fourteen times smaller. Another map projection is the Gall-Peters
projection, which shows the true proportion of countries to one another, but the
continents are pretty…stretched. The most accurate map projection is the AuthaGraph
World Map, designed by Hajime Narukawa in 1999, since all the continents and oceans
are quite proportional. But it’s not used that widely because the Mercator Projection is
easier to read and understand.
There have been many other attempts at drawing an accurate flat projection, such as
the Winkel tripel projection created by Oswald Winkel in 1921, the Dymaxion map
created by Buckminster Fuller in 1943, the Aitoff projection proposed by David A. Aitoff
in 1889, and dozens more. We can’t represent Earth on a flat surface perfectly, but we
can see how every map has different elements that help us understand our world in a
better way.
