Variations of Maps

Today in class we learned more about maps and what they do. I learned a lot of things about maps and how they've changed over the years. We also went more in-depth about why the Mercator Map is not accurate. For example, if you tore off the pieces of a globe and tried to put it on a flat surface it would have holes and would not fit together. The main reason why there is so much distortion is that, on the Mercator Map, the latitude on the equator has to be the same distance as the poles. On a globe, there is a big difference between the length of the latitude line on the equator versus the poles because the poles are a much shorter distance. They tried to address this problem by making many different kinds of maps. For example, they made a map that tries to closely resemble what the pieces of a globe would look like flat, but the continents still being connected. Also, they tried making maps that are rounded on the end but yet none of them are perfect.