![]() These useful traits of maps motivated the development of map projections. Maps can be more useful than globes in many situations: they are more compact and easier to store, they readily accommodate an enormous range of scales, they are viewed easily on computer displays, they can facilitate measuring properties of the terrain being mapped, they can show larger portions of the Earth's surface at once, and they are cheaper to produce and transport. Therefore, a map projection must have been used to create the map, and, conversely, maps could not exist without map projections. The study of map projections is the characterization of these distortions.Ī map of the earth is a representation of a curved surface on a plane. ![]() ![]() Every distinct map projection distorts in a distinct way. ![]() Since any method of representing a sphere's surface on a plane is a map projection, all map projections distort. The Mercator projection shows courses of constant bearing as straight lines.Ĭarl Friedrich Gauss's Theorema Egregium proved that a sphere cannot be represented on a plane without distortion. ![]()
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