If you did the orange peel activity in NORTH: Maps Then and Now, you know with certainty that trying to make a round globe fit onto a completely flat surface is not easy. One way that cartographers manage to draw the Earth, which is a sphere, as a flat map is to use different kinds of map projections.

Wait, what's a map projection? Glad you asked! A map projection is a method of showing the Earth's surface on a map that least distorts or changes the shape, area, distance, and direction of features on a globe. Globes and maps of the world generally show lines of latitude and longitude, also known as parallels and meridians that cross each other on the surface of the Earth. This is called a graticule.

Globes correctly represent the shape, area, distance and direction of features on the surface of the earth. Map projections are designed to correctly show shape, area, distance or direction on a flat surface, but necessarily have to distort some of these features when correctly representing others. This is called distortion.