Mercator

The Mercator projection is a cylindrical map projection created by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. It represents the Earth’s curved surface on a flat map, preserving angles and shapes, which makes it useful for navigation. However, this comes at a cost: areas near the poles, like Greenland and Antarctica, appear much larger than they actually are. While it effectively shows direction, the Mercator projection distorts size, making equatorial regions appear smaller compared to those near the poles, leading to misconceptions about the relative size of countries and continents.