How is the difficulty with the Mercator Projection solved?

How is the difficulty with the Mercator Projection solved?

• A. Polar projection
• B. Gnomonic projection
• C. Lambert projection
• D. Equal-area projection

Answer: (A)

The main idea is that the Mercator projection makes regions near the poles grow unrealistically large because it preserves angles but distorts scale as you move away from the equator. To map polar regions accurately, you switch to a projection centered on the pole—the polar projection. By centering the projection at the pole, the distortion around that region is minimized, so distances and shapes near the pole look more realistic and usable.

The other projections don’t address the pole distortion in the same way. A gnomonic projection maps great circles to straight lines but can’t represent the whole globe without severe distortion elsewhere. An equal-area projection preserves area but distorts shapes, and Lambert projections describe specific conformal or equal-area families that aren’t tailored to solving the pole distortion by centering on the pole.