What is a Peterson projection map?

Answer 1

The "Peterson Projection Map" is a projection of the physical traits of Earth's continents that is not altered by the spherical distortion of a globe. Most maps in text books and classrooms are Globe projections which are laid flat and "forced" into a rectangular format (shape). The result of this process is that the image of the continents in the northern and southern hemispheres are elongated by the stretching effect of forcing a spherical projection into a rectangular image. Meanwhile, the continents that brace the equator are "squished", for lack of a better term, into a projection that falsifies the true size of a particular land mass.

Examples of the sphere-to-rectangle transition include Greenland appearing as large as Africa, Europe and North America seem larger then India, while Australia stretches into the distance. In reality, North America & China are almost identical in size, Europe is more like a sub-continent of Asia and Africa & India dwarf nearly all other continents in size.

The common argument for the creation and use of the "Peterson" map is that it would help school children throughout the world to understand the true nature and size of our world and it's continents. Also that the enlarged and elongated images only helps to symbolically enforce a Geo-Political sense of supremacy, as it wrongly shows the nations of Western Civilization to be larger than they actually are as well as to always produce them in the middle of the distorted map.

-J. Gordon, Missoula, MT.

Answer 2

The Peterson projection map is a type of cylindrical equal-area map projection that minimizes distortion in the size of countries. It aims to accurately represent areas and shapes of landmasses by sacrificing the projection of straight lines and directions. The projection is useful for displaying the true sizes of countries, particularly at higher latitudes.