The term world refers to the universe of discourse. This is often synonymous with the planet Earth or the entire Universe. However, it can be used in less literal terms; for example, when describing two people with very little in common, one can describe them as "living in two different worlds."

Here at Mapclicker.com we want to bring you the world. Including all that we can see from above. Cultural and physical. Allthough we do not hold the complete truth, we are aming for a fair and open worldview. If you do not agree with our maps, you are more than welcome to send us a message, please include links to the fixed shapefiles ;-)

Here at Geography-test we're not the only people who are into maps. Check out this amazing video of Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones discribing what they say is the world's worst border. Or look at our Asia Geograpghy Quiz and check it out for yourself.

If you like their videos they currently have five more!

car·tog·ra·phy

The word cartography is derived from the French word cartographie, this in turn is derived from the Latin carta (map) and the Greek word graphei (to draw or to write). So cartography is the creation of maps. But also map projections.

Here at mapclicker we are our own cartographers, we've created a staggering amount of map. In all our favorite projections and Mercator. We primarily use Robinson and LAEA. Exceptions are offcourse made for Britain, maybe that is why their projection is called British National Grid. The most commonly used projection is Mercator, but that has some major drawbacks. Because Mercator really messes with sizes espessialy near the north and south poles, on a mercator projection Greenland and the continent of Africa look about the same size. But in fact Africa is about 14! times larger than Greenland. This image made by pratham.

Just like we said before, Mercator projection is the most common. But whatever the projection, they all start with a little white lie: "The world is flat". Here at mapclicker we understand that you can't carry a globe with you for your phone, or navigation system. And because no one can, mapmakers (or carthographers) have used multiple way to distort the world's surface, better known as mapprojections or simply projections. And just as the music of Beethoven was named after Beethoven so are projections.

Mercator

Gerardus Mercator was born in 1512 in modernday Belgium then called East Flanders. He create the mercator projection in aide of sailers. The strait lines you could draw over a map worked great in the age of compasses.

Mercator

Robinson

Robinson projection

The Robinson projection was presented in 1963 by Dr. Arthus H. Robinson and was created by request of a commercial atlas publisher. Dr Robinson experimented with by changing the vertical and horizontal scales using a table. He kept refining the variables until he found it aesthetically pleasing. Quite the exception when most projections are based on mathmatical formulas. More information including the projectiontable can be found here: Indept Robinson explaination.