Peter's World Map

Today was a very interesting day. Our class learned about two different maps. The first one is the Mercator which is the most commonly used map in the United States of America. When the class had to compare this map with the Gall–Peters projection map we all thought that it looked really stretched out, and that it was wrong. It turns out that the Peters projection map is actually a lot more accurate than the Mercator map, and is closer the the actual Earth. The Mercator map is used almost everywhere, but is very inaccurate. The Mercator map has Greenland half the size of Africa, Alaska bigger than Mexico, Europe bigger than South America , etc. The good thing about the Peters projection map is that it has all of the right sizes and shapes, and still has the same longitude & latitude of the Mercator. In my opinion, I think schools should follow Boston and start using the Peters projection map because it is more accurate and precise. A lot of people use the Mercator still because they are used to it, but if we used the Peters map with young kids, then they will get used to the right map. Also the Mercator shows how the northern hemisphere is more dominant than the southern hemisphere, so in the video they just flipped it. When they flipped it, it looked so weird but also showed how other countries feel in the bottom left corner. The Peters map also made continents and countries smaller so continents like Europe wouldn't be falsely dominating over continents like Africa and South America. I think the Peters projection map will show us the world better, and give kids a more accurate version of our world.