Week 6 Submission

Equal Area Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 12,103.63649 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 12,915.856858 Kilometers













Equidistant Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 11,373.808411 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 8,145.837389 Kilometers













Conformal Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 16,273.910536 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 15,897.194586 Kilometers







Map projections are very useful tools for displaying the whole world on paper. The truth is that there is no perfect map projection. Each projection is distorted in some way, which makes choosing the right map projection hard. The way to choose the right map projection is to identify what you are trying to accomplish with your map and to choose the one that best fits your purpose. Map projections are significant because by looking at the map projection that someone chooses, you can identify their biases and potential goals. For example, if someone uses a Mercator projection, they are probably not located near the Equator because this particular projection makes the higher latitudes seem much larger than they actually are.

During this week’s lab, we needed to create two maps from three different map categories: equal area, equidistant, and conformal map projections. For the equal area map projections, I used the World Eckert V and World Eckert VI. These maps are nearly identical. They are wonderful because they keep the correct area of all the land masses. These maps are especially important in geography because the sizes of continents are very important in this field. When studying climate or populations, it is vitally important to have the correct size for each land mass.

The second map projection type I looked at was equidistant map projections. For this projection, I chose World Equidistant Conic and Word Equidistant Cylindrical map projections. These projections have uniform distances from the center of the projection to any other place on the map. These projections are important because sometimes your main objective in a map might be preserving the distance between two points. However, this projection does not keep all area equal, just the few parts of the map that you are trying to preserve.

The third map projection type I looked at was conformal map projections. For this projection type, I chose Mercator and Stereographic map projections. The Mercator map is the projection that is used mostly in American schools. They are used so often because they make the United States look much bigger than it should be compared to countries closer to the equator. They are also useful because all conformal map projections preserve the correct angles. However, they greatly distort the sizes of the land masses. These maps are easy to use because all the meridians and parallels are connected at right angles.