What is the problem with the Mercator projection?

What is the problem with the Mercator projection?

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. This map shows that in reality, Brazil is almost as large as Canada, even though it appears to be much smaller on Mercator maps.

Is the Mercator projection used exclusively in the US?

The Mercator projection is everywhere. If you went to public school any time before 1991, this is the map projection that told you Greenland was the size of Africa, Alaska was bigger than Brazil, and Antarctica was an infinite, frozen nightmare.

What projection did Mercator use?

Therefore, Mercator himself used the equal-area sinusoidal projection to show relative areas. However, despite such distortions, the Mercator projection was, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps the most common projection used in world maps, despite being much criticized for this use.

How does a Mercator projection work?

To keep longitude lines straight and maintain the 90° angle between the latitude and longitude lines, the Mercator projection uses varying distances between latitude lines away from the equator. As a result, the Earth’s poles and landmasses closest to them are distorted.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the gall Peters projection?

Advantages: On Peters’s projection, […], areas of equal size on the globe are also equally sized on the map. Disadvantages: Peters’s chosen projection suffers extreme distortion in the polar regions, as any cylindrical projection must, and its distortion along the equator is considerable.

Which of the following is a characteristic of the Mercator projection?

Which of the following is a characteristic of the Mercator projection? The size and shape of countries in the higher latitudes are greatly exaggerated.

Is the Mercator projection biased?

The Mercator Projection has many flaws and it is a prime example of how map bias can shape one’s world view. For example, the map shows Greenland as roughly the same size as the entire continent of Africa. However, in actuality, Africa is 14 times larger than Greenland.

What is Gerardus Mercator famous for?

Though Mercator is best known for his cylindrical maps, he created various map types, like this spherical map. If you have ever seen a map of the world in a classroom or in an atlas, chances are you have seen the work of Gerardus Mercator, a 16th-century Flemish cartographer (mapmaker).

How do you calculate Mercator projection?

The formula for Mercator’s projection is T(ϕ, θ)=(θ, ln(|sec(ϕ) + tan(ϕ)|)). Of course, there are a huge number of map projections. Two more cylindrical projections are shown in figure 2.

What are the characteristics of Mercator projection?

Mercator is a conformal map projection. Directions, angles, and shapes are maintained at infinitesimal scale. Any straight line drawn on this projection represents an actual compass bearing. These true direction lines are rhumb lines and generally do not describe the shortest distance between points.

What is a major weakness of the Mercator projection?

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.

What is the Mercator projection?

In fact, the Mercator projection was the first projection regularly identified in atlases. It is a cylindrical map projection that is a product of its time. During the sixteenth century, new geographic information was pouring in from around the world, trade routes were being established, and sailors, explorers, and merchants needed accurate maps.

How does the Mercator map distort the 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. What is distorted on a Mercator projection map?

What did Gerardus Mercator use on his map?

Gerardus Mercator. …his name in the “Mercator projection,” which he used on his map of the world in 1569.…. navigation chart. …century they were replaced by Mercator projection charts that showed compass directions as straight lines.

Is the Mercator map useful in the Arctic?

Its usefulness is limited in the polar regions of the planet. The Mercator projection becomes undefined at the north and south poles. Since you can navigate around the top of the arctic circle, the map becomes useless because you would need to go off the map to come back onto it.