Look at the map on the left, Africa is roughly the same size as North America. But, the reality is very different that what is shown in this map. As demonstrated in the map in the right, many countries, including the United States could fit into Africa. This is the result of distortion in mapping.
Our earth is in the shape of a sphere with a positive curvature. Any shape with a curvature greater than zero cannot be flatten or modeled by a piece of paper. Given the spherical shape of earth, the transformation of every point from the sphere (3D) to a 2D map can not preserve the area, angle, and distance together and some properties must be sacrificed in the projection. There are various types of projections, each of which preserve different properties, such as: cone and cylinder projections.
The conical projection is area preserving.
The cylindrical projection is not area preserving. In fact, it's angular preserving or conformal.
Wow! I didnt know that all those coutries could fit into africa.
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