Projecting a round surface of the Earth on a flat surface is not an easy task. Scientists are trying to find an optimal way to do it for centuries. In fact the most common map projection that we use almost everyday in Google Maps and other mapping services, has been introduced in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator.
Guys from Vox decided to give it a shot and tried to explain the complexity of map projections in a simple way… And they’ve succeeded. This video will ultimately explain you the concept of projections and why all world maps are in fact wrong.
Totally Geoawesome!
Awesome video. Coming from a cartographer, projections always cause a ruckus 🙂
The maps are not wrong. You are just too dumb to understand projections.
Way to be insulting and not contributing much to the discussion!
That article claims the maps are wrong. But that’s false. They are spheres correctly projected on a 2d surface. That’s not “wrong”, thats just another way to display them. There are actual mathematical equations that describe these projections. Who ever says the maps are wrong is obviously too dumb to understand how projections work.
[…] of nautical directions rather than precise preservation of the shape and size of land masses, Mercator’s simplification is the reason Colombia and the UK appear roughly the same size (Colombia is in fact over four times […]
[…] or stretching it. Likewise, when cartographers try to flatten the Earth for a map projection, distortions in terms of shape, distance, direction, or land area are inevitable to creep […]