• @volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz
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    181 day ago

    Firstly, I do think that projections which enlarge Europe and north America relative to the global south are a problem and every curriculum should include education about how this happens and what the world really looks like.

    Honestly, at least in school you should use a globe to begin with. It is the best projection there is. I’m also pretty sure there are online “globes” that you can turn any way you want. Using a 2D projection is mostly unnecessary in education.

    • @PixxlMan@lemmy.world
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      220 hours ago

      A globe isn’t a projection at all, it’s the real deal. Projection occurs when you take that 3D surface and map it to a 2D surface.

      • @volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz
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        214 hours ago

        I mean, if I wanted to knit pick - I guess theoretically the earth isn’t a perfect ball, and the mountains aren’t flat, so you would need a globe with topography for it to really not be a projection but a model

        • The topography is basically not significant.

          The elevation of the highest point on Mt. Everest is 8,848 meters. Compared to the radius of the Earth itself (averaging 6,371,000 meters and varying about 10,000 meters from that average), that 0.139% difference in radius at that mountain not going to be noticeable.

          If you shrunk the entire earth down to the size of a 2 meter diameter ball (1 meter radius), Mt. Everest would rise about 1.39 millimeters from the surface.

          Simple imperfections in polishing a representative globe would represent larger variations in altitude than exist on the Earth itself.