How are equal-area projections of Earth inaccurate?
A. There are distortion near the center of the map.
B. Directions and the shapes of the landmasses are distorted.
C. This projection does not show true sizes.
D. Areas close to the poles are disproportionately large
D. Areas close to the poles are disproportionately large
The correct answers are A, B, and D.
A. There are distortion near the center of the map: Equal-area projections of Earth can suffer from distortion near the center of the map. This occurs because the projection attempts to maintain equal area throughout, leading to compression and distortion of landmasses closer to the center.
B. Directions and the shapes of the landmasses are distorted: Equal-area projections can also distort directions and shapes of landmasses. Depending on the specific projection used, land features can appear stretched, squished, or otherwise distorted.
C. This projection does not show true sizes: This statement is not applicable to equal-area projections. Equal-area projections aim to preserve accurate relative sizes of land and ocean areas, even if shapes and directions are distorted.
D. Areas close to the poles are disproportionately large: Equal-area projections do not necessarily make areas close to the poles disproportionately large. However, they can still exhibit distortion in these regions, such as elongation or compression, depending on the particular projection used.
Therefore, the correct responses are A, B, and D.
The correct answer is C. This projection does not show true sizes.
To understand why equal-area projections of Earth are inaccurate in terms of showing true sizes, we need to understand how these projections work. Equal-area projections aim to maintain accurate relative proportions of the Earth's surface areas on the map. In other words, they attempt to ensure that each region on the map represents the same proportion of the Earth's actual surface area.
However, in order to preserve equal areas, other properties such as shapes, distances, and directions are often distorted. This means that the shapes of landmasses might not be represented accurately, distances between different points may become distorted, and the directions might be slightly altered.
While equal-area projections minimize distortion in terms of area, they are unable to show true sizes. When these projections are used to display the entire Earth, areas near the poles appear disproportionately large compared to their actual size on the Earth's surface. This is because the Earth is a three-dimensional object, and when projected onto a flat map, distortion occurs as distances are compressed towards the poles.
Therefore, the correct answer is C. This projection does not show true sizes.