Why all World Maps are Wrong

Making accurate world maps is mathematically impossible. Maps are flat representations of our spherical planet. Johnny Harris cut open a plastic globe to understand just what it takes to turn a sphere into something flat. His struggle to make a flat map out of the plastic globe is indicative of a challenge mapmakers have faced for centuries: It is mathematically impossible to translate the surface of a sphere onto a plane without some form of distortion.

To solve this problem, mathematicians and cartographers have developed a huge library of representations of the globe, each distorting a certain attribute and preserving others. Video from Vox Video Lab: http://bit.ly/video-lab