Daily Mail:
Take a look at a map today, and you’re likely to see that North America is larger than Africa, Alaska is larger than Mexico and China is smaller than Greenland. But in reality China is four times bigger than Greenland, Africa is three times bigger than North America and Mexico is larger than Alaska.
The distortion is the result of the Mercator projection, the map most commonly seen hanging in classrooms and in text books, which was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the world.
Maps have always fascinated me and this is “old news” but if you have kids, go ahead and blow their mind showing them the Mercator map they are likely familiar with compared to other maps like the Gall-Peters projection.
I assume you’ve seen this very relevant clip from The West Wing: http://youtu.be/n8zBC2dvERM
Distortion is the result of EVERY projection. Taking a 3d object onto a 2d surface must be distorted in some way.
Really, “every map”? Does anybody use Mercator anymore? And it’s not like Gall-Peters is any better. “Old news”, indeed. This is a manufactured controversy from the 1960s, which has since become the butt of jokes, as on The West Wing. Why would you waste your time reading a tabloid like the Daily Mail?
I was surprised to read that Africa was 3x bigger than North America. However, I think that is wrong. At least if Wikipedia is correct, Africa is about 25% bigger than North America.
Christ! Nearly clicked onto the Daily Mail website there.
Google maps uses Mercator, or at least a modification to it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoogleMaps#Map_projection
Does anybody use Google Maps as a world map? Mercator is fine for small-scale maps away from the poles. But I seem to recall Mercator being deprecated for world maps decades ago, along with Peters. How many kids are being taught world geography with it today?
And arbitrary decisions infiltrate the most “universal truths” of our existence.
Why is North “up”, why is the letter “A” drawn that way? Why is 1+1 = 2 and not 1+1=∆?
At some point in order for civilization to move forward someone has to make an arbitrary decision to formalize a concept. We’re all taught those arbitrary decisions early enough in life that we don’t question them and just assume them as “facts”.
Every arbitrary decision is riddled with flaws when analyzed logically.
It was hardly an arbitrary decision to make North “up”. For one thing, it’s a binary choice; it’s either A or B. That being said, it’s not like the people making the maps simply flipped a coin.
Really? You think with 360 degrees of horizon there are only two choices for “up” on a map?
Yes. Compasses have been used for navigation since about the 11th century. Polar stars were used before that. You navigate using known, (relatively) fixed points. You would certainly make your maps the same way.
Given that, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to get the overhead/up/North connection.
You only say that because that’s the way it is. Why not have arbitrarily chosen West as the direction to Polaris.
What if instead of Europe having been the source of much of the navigational charting, let’s say Australia had been the source of most maps. Polaris isn’t visible, so they could just as legitimately have chosen Sigma Octantis as the “North star”.
There is nothing inherent about North in our navigational system. It is as arbitrary a choice as B coming after A in the alphabet.