The distortion is the result of the Mercator map which was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the world

It gives the right shapes of countries but at the cost of distorting sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the north

For instance, north America looks larger, or at least as big, as Africa, and Greenland also looks of comparable size

In reality, you can fit north America into Africa and still have space for India, Argentina, Tunisia and some left over

Map suggests Scandinavian countries are larger than India, whereas in reality India is three times the size

The biggest challenge for cartographers is that it is impossible to portray reality of spherical world on a flat map

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.

The Mercator projection, the map most commonly seen
hanging in classrooms and in text books, was created in
1596 to help sailors navigate the world. The familiar map
gives the right shapes of land masses, but at the cost of
distorting their sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the
north

You might think that the advent of satellite imagery and tools such as Google maps has improved our view of the world, but this isn’t necessarily the case, according to James Wan writing in the Guardian.

Much of this is due to technical reasons, said Mr Wan, while others inconsistences are caused by ideological assumptions that can change the way we see the world.

The biggest challenge is that it is impossible to portray the reality of the spherical world on a flat map – a problem that has haunted cartographers for centuries.



One of the best alternatives to the Mercator projection was
presented in 1974 by D. Arno Peters (pictured). The Gall-
Peters projection makes seeing the relative size of places
much easier. However it also has its flaws as certain places
appear stretched, horizontally near the poles and vertically
near the Equator

continue reading

the map on Google is wrong .

Hmm educative
[img]http://www.?aff=391[/img]

..

the problem is i can't locate my hometown "Akutupa Kiri" on the world map. Abeg who dem give d space to?

osystein:

The distortion is the result of the Mercator map which was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the world

It gives the right shapes of countries but at the cost of distorting sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the north

For instance, north America looks larger, or at least as big, as Africa, and Greenland also looks of comparable size

In reality, you can fit north America into Africa and still have space for India, Argentina, Tunisia and some left over

Map suggests Scandinavian countries are larger than India, whereas in reality India is three times the size

The biggest challenge for cartographers is that it is impossible to portray reality of spherical world on a flat map

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.

The Mercator projection, the map most commonly seen
hanging in classrooms and in text books, was created in
1596 to help sailors navigate the world. The familiar map
gives the right shapes of land masses, but at the cost of
distorting their sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the
north

You might think that the advent of satellite imagery and tools such as Google maps has improved our view of the world, but this isn’t necessarily the case, according to James Wan writing in the Guardian.

Much of this is due to technical reasons, said Mr Wan, while others inconsistences are caused by ideological assumptions that can change the way we see the world.

The biggest challenge is that it is impossible to portray the reality of the spherical world on a flat map – a problem that has haunted cartographers for centuries.



One of the best alternatives to the Mercator projection was
presented in 1974 by D. Arno Peters (pictured). The Gall-
Peters projection makes seeing the relative size of places
much easier. However it also has its flaws as certain places
appear stretched, horizontally near the poles and vertically
near the Equator

continue reading

. K

osystein: the map on Google is wrong .

inverted, not wrong

Never knew this,thanks Man.

I can't remember when last i looked at a world map though..

osystein: the map on Google is wrong .

yeah right .... google is 'wrong' and some geniuses on NL know better than Google inc that spend hundreds of million of dollars to develop an outstanding GIS application.
I give up ....

ademoladeji: . K

if you can't comprehend what the OP wrote just move on, you don't need to be childish.

ok

PDP at work again....








Signed: APC.

____

kobonaire: yeah right .... google is 'wrong' and some geniuses on NL know better than Google inc that spend hundreds of million of dollars to develop an outstanding GIS application.
I give up ....

Did you read the article?

Quite Educative...

osystein:

Did you read the article?

yes I did but you need to make more specific assertions rather than just "map on google is wrong" .... have you used google maps?

Yeah!... Absolutely.. I've seen the documentary on YouTube before.

....Like i Care.....

The Mercator projection could have been effected due to the sphericity of the Earth. When u are positioned for instance at d equator and look towards the North pole it will seem as if the continents taper with increased offsets from the eaquator. This tapering results in an apparent reduction in size of the continents towards the North Pole.
Mercator projection was was used to correct for this effect. However it later came to the realization of cartographers that the Mercator projection has an over correction effect on the world map, thereby making the continents towards the North and South Pole bigger than they really are.

more

Another age-old convention that has subtly but seemingly innocuously under-privileged the southern hemisphere comes from the fact that the north is always put at the top. This was not always the case. In medieval Christian maps, east was located at the top because it was believed the world and the garden of Eden emanated from the east. Meanwhile in Islamic maps of around the same period, south was up.

The fact that our maps typically put north at the top is a mere convention. But like with Mercator's various technical manipulations, very minor decisions can have very major effects on how we see the world.

It would of course be silly to speculate on whether world history would have taken any different turns if our basic cartographic conventions had been different over the last half a millennium, but imagine for a moment that when we pictured the world we live in, we all thought of this:



www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/02/google-maps-gets-africa-wrong

I totally agree with the OP or whoever is the author of this write up. No map can be an actual representation of a geographical region.

I don't believe this until musiwa gives his opinion.

The oyinbo man have been cheating since 1 BC

hardbody: ....Like i Care.....

Must u comment?

This is what happen. When you let people write your history.. Till date none of african geographers have come out to dispute such.. They just follow what ever they teach them #ZomBie0ZomBie!!!

So for over 5 centuries, we've been looking @ the world map the wrong way

Informative.

Africa at 30 million square kilometers is far far larger than North America at 24.5 million

Nice article, eye opening no doubt.
But I will have loved to see more data as in mileage. What I mean is, If Africa is from Latitude/longitude 1 to Latitude/Longitude10, what is the distance/mileage between the cardinal points, that should give us a more objective idea of the size of each continent. Until when I have that fact , the present Map suffices.