Choosing A Projection Surface
A surface that can be unfolded or unrolled into a plane or sheet without stretching, tearing or shrinking is called a developable surface. The cylinder, cone and of course the plane are all developable surfaces. The sphere and ellipsoid are not developable surfaces. As noted in the introduction, any projection of a sphere or an ellipsoid onto a plane will have to distort the image. (To compare, one cannot flatten an orange peel without tearing and warping it.)
One way of describing a projection is first to project from the Earth's surface to a developable surface such as a cylinder or cone, and then to unroll the surface into a plane. While the first step inevitably distorts some properties of the globe, the developable surface can then be unfolded without further distortion.
Read more about this topic: Map Projection
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“Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing associates by others’ eyes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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