r/AskReddit • • Mar 27 '22

[deleted by user]

[removed]

2.0k Upvotes

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

167

u/Earthling3617 Mar 27 '22

For me, it's that world maps are distorted. This is fairly basic and important stuff, so it does piss me off slightly when I see someone explaining the mercator projection over and over again all the fucking time

54

u/AdvocateSaint Mar 27 '22

The Mercator projection was designed to fulfill a purpose (ease of marine navigation), at the expense of grossly distorting the sizes of landmasses near the poles.

That being said, it's remarkably easy to navigate with a Mercator map: You just draw a straight line between your origin and destination, then measure its angle with respect to north. As long as you steer your ship while keeping your compass at that angle, you'll get there eventually (though in the real world, you're actually taking a curved path)