My favorite geography clip ever
Monday, December 17th, 2012 07:52 pmWest Wing: Peters Projection
Oh man, my co-worker showed me this today. I almost hurt myself laughing. The thing is, changing the projection (or flipping north and south) on a map, really does generate this response from people. Most people so use to seeing the shape of continents on a Mercator map, that when they see something different, it blows their minds.
Other than that, it is a really good explanation of both the Mercator and Peters projection. Along with giving the most common argument of why Peters is superior (according to some people).
As an aside, if you are looking at a map of the US and want to know if it's the Mercator projection, just look at the northern border with Canada. The border between the two countries (with some exceptions) follows the 49th parallel north. In a map using a Mercator projection, the line with be flat because Mercator makes all latitude/longitude parallel, straight lines. If it's curved, then some other projection is being used. There are other projections that produce straight latitude/longitude lines, but Mercator is the most common.
And now you know.
Oh man, my co-worker showed me this today. I almost hurt myself laughing. The thing is, changing the projection (or flipping north and south) on a map, really does generate this response from people. Most people so use to seeing the shape of continents on a Mercator map, that when they see something different, it blows their minds.
Other than that, it is a really good explanation of both the Mercator and Peters projection. Along with giving the most common argument of why Peters is superior (according to some people).
As an aside, if you are looking at a map of the US and want to know if it's the Mercator projection, just look at the northern border with Canada. The border between the two countries (with some exceptions) follows the 49th parallel north. In a map using a Mercator projection, the line with be flat because Mercator makes all latitude/longitude parallel, straight lines. If it's curved, then some other projection is being used. There are other projections that produce straight latitude/longitude lines, but Mercator is the most common.
And now you know.