Political Map of the World

Shown above
The map above is a political map of the world centered on Europe and Africa. It shows the location of most of the world's countries and includes their names where space allows.

Representing a round earth on a flat map requires some distortion of the geographic features no matter how the map is done. We have used a Mercator projection for this map because it is the projection most commonly used in schools. On this map, geographic boundaries that trend north-south appear as vertical lines, geographic boundaries that trend east-west appear as horizontal lines. This type of projection causes a minimum of country-shape distortion near the equator, a small amount of distortion at mid-latitudes, but extreme distortion near the poles. For that reason, the map does not extend to the north and south poles.

Physical Map of the World

Shown above
The map shown here is a terrain relief image of the world with the boundaries of major countries shown as white lines. It includes the names of the world's oceans and the names of major bays, gulfs, and seas. Lowest elevations are shown as a dark green color with a gradient from green to dark brown to gray as elevation increases. This allows the major mountain ranges and lowlands to be clearly visible.

This map is also a Mercator projection centered on Europe and Africa. A scale of miles is not shown on these maps because the scale changes with distance north and south of the equator. Scale is highly exaggerated as distance from the equator increases.