Mercator Projection v. Gall-Peters Projection Maps

The most popular version is the Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It's been widely used for centuries, including today in various forms by Google Maps and many other online services. This map has imaginary lines that cut all meridians at the same angle, that makes it a useful tool for navigation. Because the Earth is roughly spherical, every flat map distorts our planet one way or another. Despite its benefits, the Mercator projection drastically distorts the size and shape of objects approaching the poles. A few things wrong with this map is the fact that it shows that Greenland is roughly the same size of Africa, but in reality can fit inside Africa about 14 times. Another misconception of the mercator is that it makes Antartica look like it dwarfs all the continents. In reality it looks like the second - smallest continent. The Gall-Peters Projection map makes seeing the relative size of places much easier.  this version comes closer to showing that what we percieve as land mass in the "South" is nearly twice as big as the "North"— 38.6 million square miles compared to 18.9 million square miles. The Mercator, however, makes the North look much larger.