Week 6 Lab

Map Projections have severe significance when it comes to interpreting them. One thing to always remember is that maps all have distortions because we live on a spherical surface and not a flat one. As you can see from these map projections the distance between Washington D.C. and Kabul can be distorted giving a false distance.
The best approximate distance I could find using Google Earth is 6,925 miles. From the maps we see the distance shifts from as low as the 5,042 mile range to about 10,107 miles range resulting in about 5,000 miles worth of distortion when comparing the two extremes distances.
The maps that portrayed the most accurate distances were the equidistant maps. The maps that portrayed the largest amount of distance were the conformal maps and the cylindrical equal area map. Lastly, the maps that portrayed the shortest distance was the equidistant cylindrical map.
Map projections play an important role in deciding which region to study and they also play an important role in GIS to display features as accurately as possible. Lastly, having the right map projection is also very important for navigation, especially for pilots and boat captains so they know how far away something really is.