In reality, Africa is actually 14 times larger. Replicating the globe onto a flat surface distorts the sizes of the countries yet many have no idea.

Answer: In the Mercator projection, the areas around the poles appear much larger than they are in proportion to areas around the equator.

The Mercator projection map shows the accurate locations of the continents and oceans. The land and water areas, however, are greatly distorted toward the North and South Poles.

On the Mercator projection map, the parallels and meridians appear as straight lines. This method proved to be accurate for showing direction. On the Mercator projection, Greenland looks larger than South America. Actually, South America is more than eight times larger than Greenland.

AuthaGraph World Map

Mercator maps distort the shape and relative size of continents, particularly near the poles. The popular Mercator projection distorts the relative size of landmasses, exaggerating the size of land near the poles as compared to areas near the equator.

Distortion. The Robinson projection is neither conformal nor equal-area. It generally distorts shapes, areas, distances, directions, and angles. The distortion patterns are similar to common compromise pseudocylindrical projections.

At 6.6 million sq. mi (17 million km2), Russia is the world’s largest country. Drag and drop it near the equator, and you see how truly huge Africa is: at 11.73 million sq. mi (30.37 million km2), it is almost twice the size of Russia.

Advantage: The Mercator map projection shows the correct shapes of the continents and directions accurately. Disadvantage: The Mercator map projection does not show true distances or sizes of continents, especially near the north and south poles.

The Gall-Peters projection (shown below) makes seeing the relative size of places much easier. Despite these benefits, the Gall-Peters projection has its flaws. It doesn’t enlarge areas as much as the Mercator projection, but certain places appear stretched, horizontally near the poles and vertically near the Equator.

Disadvantages: Mercator projection distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases from the Equator to the poles, where the scale becomes infinite. So, for example, Greenland and Antarctica appear much larger relative to land masses near the equator than they actually are.

Google Maps mainly uses the Mercator projection because it allows to preserve the angles. At first, Google Maps did not use this projection, and as a consequence in cities at high latitudes, right angles could not be maintained on roads and the like.

List of the Advantages of the Robinson Projection

• Almost everything is accurately represented on the projection.
• It replicates elements of a sphere to the average viewer.
• The Robinson projection minimizes distortion throughout most of the map.
• The Robinson projection uses normal aspects.

Maps contain lots of information. Most maps will have the five following things: a Title, a Legend, a Grid, a Compass Rose to indicate direction, and a Scale.

Maps represent the real world on a much smaller scale. They help you travel from one location to another. They help you organize information. They help you figure out where you are and how to get where you want to go.

They are- title, direction, legend(symbols), north areas, distance(scale), labels, grids and index, citation – which make it easier for people like us to understand the basic components of maps.

Since any map projection is a representation of one of those surfaces on a plane, all map projections distort.

The only ‘projection’ which has all features with no distortion is a globe. 1° x 1° latitude and longitude is almost a square, while the same ‘block’ near the poles is almost a triangle.

Accuracy, Decoration, Interaction Continents on a world globe are accurately sized and proportional to one another. Their relative size and distance are correct, whereas maps inevitably contain some level of distortion. When it comes to geography, the world globe is superior to maps.

Types of Map Projections

• Cylindrical Map Projections. Cylindrical map projections are one way of portraying the Earth.
• Conic Map Projections. Secondly, conic map projections include the equidistant conic projection, the Lambert conformal conic, and Albers conic.
• Azimuthal Map Projection.

Sometimes they convey power. But maps always help us make sense of something about the world around us. By tracing the trajectory of our evolving relationship with maps, perhaps we can learn something about ourselves and how we solve problems and orient ourselves in the world.

The world map you are probably familiar with is called the Mercator projection (below), which was developed all the way back in 1569 and greatly distorts the relative areas of land masses. It makes Africa look tiny, and Greenland and Russia appear huge.

The simple answer to the question was this: It isn’t upside-down at all. In a flip of convention, my giant, framed world map displays the southern hemisphere — Australia included — at the top. It’s a twist, but not strictly speaking a distortion.

Greenland is approximately 2,166,086 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 354% larger than Greenland.

For example, Greenland and Africa are shown as roughly the same size, although in reality Africa is about fourteen times larger. In contrast, the regions along the equator—Africa, India, and South America, to name a few—appear smaller, especially when seen next to the distorted northern half of the map.

Denmark