Real Projection World Map

A map projection is classified depending on the type of mathematical formula used to project the spherical globe onto the flat map. As it shows, greenland is the country that has the largest percent difference between its apparent size in a mercator projection and it’s real size (it’s only about 1/4 of the apparent size). Mercator’s rise to the top with any map projection style, the big challenge lies in depicting a spherical object as a 2d graphic.

As with other maps, the tops and sides suffer from the most distortion. Map projections preserve some of the properties of the sphere at the expense of others, producing maps that appear to depict the world in different ways. For many people, the earth as they know it is heavily informed by the mercator projection—a tool used for nautical navigation that eventually became the world’s most widely recognized map.

Map found via reddit, click for larger version while it’s well known that the mercator projection distorts the world, the maps here show very clearly by how much.

This keeps the continents in decent shape while causing the oceans to appear smaller, and cutting off half of australia and all of new zealand. Animating the mercator projection to the true size of each country in relation to all the others. A great tool for educators. Top 5 different world map projections let’s start with our comparison between the maps.