Mercator 1569 world map
Ok kiddo, imagine you're trying to draw a picture of the whole world. But the world is round like a ball, so it's hard to make it look right on a flat piece of paper. That's where a guy named Gerardus Mercator comes in. He made a special kind of map called the Mercator 1569 World Map.
The Mercator map is special because it helps to make the round earth look flat on a map. Here's how it works: imagine you have an orange and you peel off the skin. If you lay the peel flat on a table, it will be all squished up and not look like a circle anymore. But if you cut the peel into little pieces and lay them flat, you can get a better idea of what the original circle looked like.
That's what Mercator did with the world! He broke it up into little pieces and laid them flat on a map. But, there was a problem. When you make a flat map of a round world, some parts get stretched and some parts get squished. This means that the parts of the map near the top and bottom look much larger than they really are in real life. They have to be stretched out so that they fit on a flat page.
This means that the countries near the equator, like Africa and South America, look much smaller on the Mercator map than they really are. But the countries near the North and South Poles, like Canada and Antarctica, look much larger than they really are.
So while the Mercator map is really useful for navigation and for understanding the shape of the world, it doesn't show the size of countries accurately. Over time, people started making different kinds of maps that show the size of countries more accurately. But Gerardus Mercator's map is still really famous and important because it was one of the first maps to show the whole world!
Did that make sense, kiddo?
The Mercator map is special because it helps to make the round earth look flat on a map. Here's how it works: imagine you have an orange and you peel off the skin. If you lay the peel flat on a table, it will be all squished up and not look like a circle anymore. But if you cut the peel into little pieces and lay them flat, you can get a better idea of what the original circle looked like.
That's what Mercator did with the world! He broke it up into little pieces and laid them flat on a map. But, there was a problem. When you make a flat map of a round world, some parts get stretched and some parts get squished. This means that the parts of the map near the top and bottom look much larger than they really are in real life. They have to be stretched out so that they fit on a flat page.
This means that the countries near the equator, like Africa and South America, look much smaller on the Mercator map than they really are. But the countries near the North and South Poles, like Canada and Antarctica, look much larger than they really are.
So while the Mercator map is really useful for navigation and for understanding the shape of the world, it doesn't show the size of countries accurately. Over time, people started making different kinds of maps that show the size of countries more accurately. But Gerardus Mercator's map is still really famous and important because it was one of the first maps to show the whole world!
Did that make sense, kiddo?