The exact angles of roads and borders are preserved in this projection. Just zoom all the way out at □□ /CIkkS7It8dĪt closer zoom levels, users are typically using maps for things like navigation, which the Mercator projection was designed for. With 3D Globe Mode on Google Maps desktop, Greenland's projection is no longer the size of Africa. The result is a more accurate depiction of countries and landmasses. The Earth is depicted as a globe at further zoom levels, sidestepping map projection issues completely and displaying the world as it actually is: round. Google, whose map app is used by approximately 150 million people per month, took the bold step of using different projections for different purposes in 2018. This includes in the classroom, where young minds are first learning about geography and forming opinions on the relationships between countries. In the GIF above, Scandinavian countries no longer loom imposingly over their European neighbors, and Canada deflates to a size similar to the United States.ĭespite inaccurate visual features-or perhaps because of them-the Mercator projection has achieved widespread adoption around the world. This visualization also highlights how distorted neighboring countries can look in Mercator projection. The continent of Africa takes a much more prominent position in this new, correctly-scaled map. Greenland, which appears as a massive icy landmass in Mercator projection, shrinks way down. Visually speaking, Canada and Russia appear to take up approximately 25% of the Earth’s surface, when in reality they occupy a mere 5%.Īs the animated GIF below-created by Reddit user, neilrkaye – demonstrates, northern nations such as Canada and Russia have been artificially “pumped up” in the minds of many people around the world. Mercator’s map inadvertently also pumps up the sizes of Europe and North America. The vast majority of us aren’t using paper maps to chart our course across the ocean anymore, so critics of the Mercator projection argue that the continued use of this style of map gives users a warped sense of the true size of countries-particularly in the case of the African continent. The new map was well-suited to nautical navigation since every line on the sphere is a constant course, or loxodrome. “It also contains fun surprises, for example how the US used to be split by a shallow sea, the Appalachains used to be very tall mountains comparable to the Himalayas, and that Florida used to be submerged.In 1569, the great cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, created a revolutionary new map based on a cylindrical projection. “It is meant to spark fascination and hopefully respect for the scientists that work every day to better understand our world and its past,” he said. The map illustrates complex and interesting scientific data in an interactive and easy-to-use way so teachers, professors, and anyone else interested in the history and science of Earth can learn, Webster said. The map will even show users what dinosaurs used to live nearby in the area they search. When searching a location on the map, the website’s 3D rotatable globe will point out where on Earth that area was located million of years ago. “I built the interactive globe visualization and the geocoding and GPates integration myself so that people could plug in their own locations.” “My software ‘geocodes’ the user’s location and then uses (Scotese’s) models to run their location backwards in time,” Webster said. NYC on the Pangea supercontinent 240 million years ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |