Tag Archives: mercator

Are All World Maps Wrong?

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Geoawesomeness got my attention today by featuring a You Tube video done by Vox folks a few months ago. The Vox video points out that basically all world maps are wrong in how projections of land masses are variously shown. Aleks Buczkowski from Geoawesomeness gave a lead-in to the Vox video in his posting on it by saying:

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.

The video from Vox does help to explain the intricacies of map projections and is really worth watching:

How Do You See Our Earth?

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How do we actually visualize the earth? The Vsauce channel has posted an intriguing video that explores this question, ranging from discussions on human color perception to map projections. And much thanks to Anne-Laure Freant, who is fast becoming my favorite geographer, for posting a blog on the video, thus bringing it to my attention.
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