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I finally compared a Mercator map to a Peters projection map side by side
Honestly, I spent years just assuming Mercator was the standard for a reason. Then I put a Peters projection right next to it in the same room. The Mercator made Greenland look bigger than Africa, which is just wrong since Africa is like 14 times bigger. The Peters map stretched things out vertically but at least kept the sizes correct. It felt like I had been lied to my whole life by every classroom wall. Has anyone else had that moment where a bad map just ruins your trust in geography?
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susan3507d ago
Oh man, I totally get why you feel that way but I see it a bit differently. The Mercator map was never meant to show size correctly, it was made for sailors to navigate straight lines on the globe. Nobody was trying to lie to us, it just got used for everything because it was familiar and looked nice on a wall for a long time. Peters projection fixes the size problem but then it squishes all the land near the equator and stretches the poles, so nothing looks like it does on a globe either. There is no perfect flat map, every single one has to make some trade off because you cant flatten a sphere without messing something up. So I guess I have more of a mixed feeling about it, like yeah the Mercator is terrible for showing size but the Peters has its own weird distortions too. Maybe we just need to teach kids that all maps are wrong in different ways rather than acting like one is the truth.
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lindaw296d ago
You said "there is no perfect flat map" and that's the whole truth right there. I think most people don't realize that even a globe has to be stretched to make it a flat picture. The Gall-Peters projection is popular but it makes Africa look like a long skinny sausage instead of the shape it really is. So swapping one distorted view for another doesn't solve anything. We should just teach kids from the start that maps are tools, not photographs.
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