I mean is stuff bigger than it actually is, or do things seem more stretched out? I am confused. I would be delighted if someone could explain it to me in the style.
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basically, take a classic globe with a light in the middle. around it, you place a piece of paper in a cylinder. Now draw the shadow of the world map you see projected on the paper onto that paper.
Congratulations! , you have a Mercator projection. that is literally what Mercator himself did when creating it.
the “stretch” is because your trying to represent a 3 dimensional object (the surface of a globe) in 2 dimensions. the process will, invariably, cause some distortions, so it becomes a question of what you want to preserve. Mercator projections stretch the size of landmasses close to the poles, as your projecting at an angle (think a film projector aiming upwards, the top of the projection is “wider” than the bottom, due to perspective)
Mercator projections have been historically favoured because they preserve the relative angles of latitude and longitude. What that means is, if you plot a course on the map of, say, 80 degrees east, you don’t need to make any alterations to that for actual travel, you can sail on a heading of 80 degrees and arrive at your destination.
A lot of other map projections lose this element in the process of preserving something else (like relative size of landmasses)
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