Why do countries look bigger on 2D maps than they actually are? Why do they work this way instead of them being their actual size in comparison to others?
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Mercator is just one of dozens and dozens of projection styles. The Earth is a 3D globe, a sphere like a ball. You see everything as its real sizes and with real angles and distances and areas. But when you put that onto a 2D image, something must be distorted because a 2D image is flat, not curved. If the Earth were a cylinder where you could just unroll the map then you’d probably be fine. But it’s not, things get narrower so to speak as you go farther north or south from the equator.
Long story short, with Mercator they were trying to preserve angles between points which is more useful for navigation. But when you preserve angles you have to sacrifice things like the size of shapes to account for the fact that they are spaced differently at higher latitudes.
Different projections are meant for different things. Some are better for looking at polar areas, some are better for looking at countries or states that go north-south, some are better for east-west-lying countries and states. And it all depends on your goal in making the map and what information you’re trying to show.
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