Mercator Cancer
I'd like to really get into details of this one but I'm on a bit of a schedule so will be short.
Mercator map is cancer. Use this website to find out what it doesn't show: The True Size Of ...
Common, go in on that website, play with it and then come back here. (If you're too lazy, or busy, check the last image in this post then come back up here). The Mercator map is useful for navigation if you're, say, going by the sea or something. If you know where you are on the Mercator map, you can figure what direction will get you where.
How can we justify using it when it simply says a small sized pizza is large sized? And the large sized pizza is small sized?
I've been an avid gamer since before birth and I assume you too have dealt with a fare share of using maps and getting a "feel" of various territories, be in a movie, book or just your own mind map of a separate work. How could we be using the wrong map for the game Lifeâ„¢?
Well, there is actually a cure to this cancer, a vaccine exists already. It's the Dymaxion map. Made by our human Bucky Fuller. (1895 - 1983)
Dymaxion Projection Animation via Wikimedia Commons
This is the most beautiful thing you'll probably see today. A map with no visual distortion to any of the countries. Representing all countries in the most beautiful one-landmass manner (the way it really is)
The Shape Earth turns into is an Icosahedron. Which shape is fascinating as hell too. Hear me out.
If you want to enclose space, the first basic shape you can create is a tetrahedron. It has 3 faces on each vertex. (If you use 2 triangles, they kiss each other and there is no space enclosed) If you want to spread your arms broader, you add one more triangle and you get the Octahedron which has 4 triangles on each vertex. If you do even broader, you get the Icosahedron with 5 triangles on each vertex. 5 x 60 degree = 300 degree. If you do it again, it becomes 360 degree (you can't do it). That means it becomes a flat circle, and you can no longer enclose space. Icosahedron is the biggest you can spread your arms when trying to enclose space.
You can see how Bucky might've come up with this map. He first got the icosahedron Earth (for the above reasons), and then probably just unfolded it trying to make sure none of the landmasses are cut out. So simple and so revolutionarily impossible to conceive of.
From the Mercator's east-west, distorted view of where we lay, to this beautiful one-landmass, dynamic, literal unfolding of our planet.
