ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Equirectangular projection

Imagine you're drawing a map of the world. You could draw it on a flat piece of paper, but the earth is a round ball, so it's hard to make it look right. So instead, you can make a special type of map called an equirectangular projection.

An equirectangular projection is like taking a picture of the globe and stretching it out onto a flat piece of paper. It's like taking a big beach ball and flattening it out into a pancake.

But because the earth is round and the paper is flat, some things don't look quite right. The farther away you are from the equator, the more stretched out everything looks. That's because the lines of longitude (which run from the North Pole to the South Pole) all meet at the poles on the globe, but they spread out on the map.

So if you're drawing a map using an equirectangular projection, it's important to remember that things near the poles will look bigger than they really are, while things near the equator will be more accurate. But it's still a good way to make a map if you want to see the whole world at once!