<center>![enter image description here](https://image.freepik.com/free-icon/earth-globe-with-continents-maps_318-60297.jpg)</center>

Historically, people didn’t have GPS, so maps were convenient for navigation purposes. However, there are serious problems with trying to accurately depict objects from a spherical Earth on a flat map. If you try to fit a globe onto a rectangular sheet of paper, you have to distort the size and/or shape of objects on the globe in order to make it fit. There are various ways of representing the Earth on a map. The maps that we are most familiar with use the Mercator projection. This method is used because it is the most useful for navigation. But, it is still very inaccurate in many ways. The inaccuracies in the map can skew the way we perceive the world.

For instance, when we look at a map, Canada, Russia, China, and Antarctica look massive. This is caused by distortions created in the process of projecting an image from a sphere onto a flat rectangle. In reality, Canada is only slightly larger than Australia. Antarctica is just a little larger than the United States. The Mercator projection maps give us this distorted perception that the United States, China, and Russia are much larger than they actually are, and Africa is much smaller than it actually is. On the maps with which we are familiar, Russia appears to be three times larger than Africa. In actuality, though, Russia, the United States, and China could all fit inside of Africa.

And we’ve all been taught that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But that’s not necessarily true if you are navigating on the basis of a flat map. When you draw a straight line on a map, you are only seeing two dimensions. What you don’t see is the upward curve. So, if you are navigating using a map and are traveling long distances, a route that appears more indirect might actually be shorter. You can see this if you draw a line between two points on a map and then draw a line between the same two points on a globe. Then get a string and measure those lines and cut a string the length of the line on the map and sit it next to the string that matches the line on the globe. If you go from Japan to Mexico, what you find is that a more northern route is a much shorter distance than a “straight line.” The circumference of the Earth is smaller towards the poles. A sphere is thicker in the middle, so a horizontal line at the equator is actually longer, once you figure in the upward curve, than a horizontal line of the same apparent length closer to the poles.  

Here's [a cool tool](http://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTcyOTk3MDg.MjAyNTk4Mg*MzYwMDAwMDA%28MA) that helps you visualize the distortions of size and shape on maps that use the Mercator projection.

And here's [another tool](http://www.earthbrowser.com/) that shows a 3D interactve model of the globe.

These are the kinds of cool things you learn by following Vox: http://www.vox.com/world/2016/12/2/13817712/map-projection-mercator-globe