Trading places; Mexico and Greenland swap place in the Mercator Projection.
This is fucked up
Map to illustrate the true size of countries
Mercator is a hideously inaccurate projection we only use because of tradition.
Now, the only truly accurate map is a globe (every elementary school classroom should have one).
But the most accurate flat map projection is AuthaGraph, which was invented in…1999. It was put together by a Japanese architect named Hajime Narukawa. We couldn’t do a projection this accurate before computers.
You can tell it was made by a Japanese guy, because look what’s in the middle ;). It looks like a completely different planet, doesn’t it.
I love maps.
Honestly scaling is a big deal but map position is something I really find interesting. Like how this map is pasfic orientated where as I’m so used to an Atlantic centered map.
See a map like this just Truely shows 1. The pasfic ocean how big it is 2. It shows how most of the land masses are fairly connected or at least more then a normal map shows
All maps are Wrong in some ways, by virtue of being the surface of a sphere squished onto a flat surface. Different projections try to balanse a lot of things that get warped in this process and prioritize differently. Do you want to keep land masses’ relative sizes? Do you want coast lines to look like they do in real life? Do you want a straight line on the map to correspond to a straight line irl? You can do a maximum of one of these perfectly, so most projections go for a compromise, while still favoring one or more over the others
