Lab 5 ( week 6)

Mercador Confomal

Distance: 10,112 miles

Stereographic Conformal

Distance: 9,878 miles

Bonne Equal Area

Distance 6,731 miles

Mollweide Equal Area

Distance: 7,926 miles

Azimuthal Equidistant

Distance: 8,341 miles

Sinusoidal Equidistant

Distance: 8,098 miles

 In this lab we used Arc Gis to create different projections that represented the world. The three different projection types are Conformal, equal area, and equidistant  the conformal map projections preserve the shape of all land masses as the should apear on earth, equal area preserves the actual area that all landmasses should have on earth, and equidistant focuses on preserving all of the distances on the map in relation to the actual distance on the planet. This exercise illustrates how different projections can radically change the distance between two points on the planet. 

The two conformal maps, the Mercador and Stereographic, preserved the shape of  land and water bodies. Conformal maps preserve  oriented angles between curves with respect to there orientation, allowing the maps to preserve the angles and shapes of figures, without preserving the size. This type o map is not effective for making quantitative measurements due to the nature of the map however it can be beneficial when identifying land masses and other objects through their appearance.

The two equal area maps, Bonne and Mollweide, preserve the actual area of continents and water bodies  This leads to the distortion of some of the images and can be inaccurate for makeing measurements across large areas. These maps can be used when the area of an object takes precedent over the distances between objects or the shape of the land masses. It is used effectively when looking at small maps that depict global distribution. 

The final two map, Azimuthal and Sinusoidal, are equidistant maps that the focus on representing the distance between objects while sacrificing their shape and area.This type of map would be most effective for measuring the distance between Washington DC United States and Kabul Afganistan even though the the shape of the countries they are located on and their area's are incorrect  This exercise helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different map projections and underlines the importance of understanding the differences between them, otherwise measurements and images can be drastically inaccurate.