Mappps: Mercator vs. Peter

Someone might be surprised to hear that there are many different ways to map out the globe. However, due to the Earth being a sphere, it is impossible to map it out on a two-dimensional rectangle with complete accuracy. Due to this, many cartographers create different world maps that each has accuracy in one department and inaccuracy in another. You say that these maps specialize in giving one set of information. The standard map that is used in American schools is the Mercator Projection map. This map specialized in keeping directional bearings and presenting something called rhumbs as straight lines. This makes the Mercator Map useful for navigational purposes, but it is not very accurate with the size of countries and continents. This leads to a lot of disinformation with the size of countries such as Greenland being roughly the same size as Africa when in reality Greenland is actually much smaller. The Peter Projection map does a better job of showing the relative sizes of countries and continents. However, it makes the countries look more stretched out, vertically near the equator and horizontally near the poles. I believe that between the two options, the Peter Projection map would be the better option to teach in school, but I believe that the Winkle Tripel projection would be the best to teach in schools because it has the least amount of distortions, it does, however, curve towards the side.


See Below: Winkle Tripel projection map which is obviously the best choice.