The mercator projection

Mapping Earth or Trapping Minds? Story of Mercator Projection Fact: India is the 7th largest country in the world in terms of Geographical area Fact: Greenland is 13th largest country in the world in terms of Geographical area Geographical Fact India is larger than Greenland in terms of Geographical area.

The funny thing is, almost everyone actually has a skewed perception of the true size of countries thanks to a cartographic technique called the Mercator projection.

The Mercator Projection Inthe great cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, created a The mercator projection new map based on a cylindrical projection. The new map was well-suited to nautical navigation since every line on the sphere is a constant course, or loxodrome.

In modern times, this is particularly useful since the Earth can be depicted as seamless in online mapping applications. That said, the true sizes of landmasses become increasingly distorted the further away from the equator they get. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but not by much.

Africa, South Asia, and South America all appear much smaller in relation to countries further from the equator. And from a North American perspective, countries such as Australia and Indonesia appear much smaller than they actually are.

Comparing the landmasses on the same latitude as Canada helps put sizes into perspective. In reality, Greenland is about fourteen times smaller than Africa.

Critics of the map — and similar projections — suggest that distortion reinforces a sense of colonialist superiority. As well, the amount of territory a country occupies is often correlated with power and access to natural resources, and map distortions can have the effect of inadvertently diminishing nations closer to the equator.

Growing awareness of map distortion is translating into concrete change. Boston public schools, for example, recently switched to the Gall-Peters projectionwhich more accurately depicts the true size of landmasses.

Mercator projection - Wikipedia

In our society we unconsciously equate size with importance and even power. The Mollweide projection has inspired many other attempts at a user-friendly equal area map. Another evolution in cartography was the Dymaxion map, invented by Buckminster Fuller and patented in In this version, the continents are no longer in their familiar positions — however, there is more spacial fidelity than in previous projection methods.

AuthaGraph divides the globe into 96 triangles, transfers them to a tetrahedron and unfolds into a rectangle.

Landmasses and seas are more accurately proportioned than in traditional projections. The biggest downfall of the AuthaGraph map is that longitude and latitude lines are no longer a tidy grid.

Africa: 16 million sq. miles

As well, continents on the map are repositioned in a way that will be unfamiliar to a population that is already geographically challenged. That said, depicting our round world on a flat surface will always come with some trade-offs.

As demand grows for a true equal-area map, it will be exciting to see what the next generation of map projections have to offer.Turns out the standard Mercator projection of the world MASSIVELY underestimates Africa's true size.

The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in It became the standard map projection for nautical navigation because of its ability to represent lines of constant course.

Converting Latitude/Longitude to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) On October 5th, , I posted a request on regardbouddhiste.comy and regardbouddhiste.comite-nav asking about conversion formulas between latitude/longitude and UTM coordinate systems.

I was a bit overwhelmed by the response. The Mercator projection is a useful navigation tool, as a straight line on a Mercator map indicates a straight course, but it is not a practical world map, because of distortion of scale near the poles. Macronutrient Nutritional element required by an organism in relatively large quantities.

Mafic Magma Magma that is relative poor in silica but rich in calcium, magnesium, and iron content.

Mercator projection - definition of Mercator projection by The Free Dictionary

This type of magma solidifies to form rocks relatively rich in calcium, magnesium, and iron but poor in silica. Conventional cartographic techniques have caused most of us to have a skewed perception of the true size of countries.

Can an equal-area map provide clarity?