Central Question: which map projection is the fairest for all countries and most useful for your task on the UN? Writing Task:

Analyze the documents and answer the scaffolding questions.

Develop a claim/thesis evaluating which map projection is the fairest for all countries and most useful for your task on the UN?

Identify evidence from the documents that support your claim/thesis.

Explain the reasoning behind your claim/thesis.

Background Information

You are a geographer for the United Nations, an intergovernmental organization (An organization that works with different governments) that is dedicated to maintaining peace across the world. Your organization, the UN, wants to adopt a map projection to use on their official maps. Three map projections are being considered: The Mercator Projection, The Robinson Projection, and the Gall-Peters Projection. All three projections have issues related to distorting or skewing landmasses. Your job is to decide which map projection is the fairest and best for all countries.

Helpful Vocabulary

Distortion- a misrepresentation of a map distance, direction, shape, or area of a place.

Variable- Factor that is liable to vary or change.

Mercator Projection:

The most popular map projection in the world has been around for 448 years now. It was created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569 – a time when Antarctica hadn’t even been discovered. Mercator was designed as a navigational tool for sailors as it was most convenient to hand-plot courses with parallel rules and triangles on this map.

In most maps, when you try to fix one kind of distortion, you increase another kind of distortion. However, Mercator is one of those rare maps whose answer to latitudinal distortion was to ensure that the longitudinal distortion is equally bad!

On a Mercator projection, Greenland is roughly the same size as Africa. In reality, Africa is almost 14 times larger, and Greenland can fit inside China no less than four times. The map also suggests that Scandinavian countries are larger than India, whereas, India is three times the size.

Pros: Sailors loved it; preserves angles and directions in a small area

Cons: Bad for understanding the real size and shape of continents and countries
How does this projection affect how countries across the world appear? How fair do you think it is? Why?