Morgan Flaherty, age 12, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for his question:

Why aren't flat maps accurate?

This tired old problem is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole': A square shape refuses to be a round shape, just as a globe refuses to be flat. A map is a flat shape and a globe is round. The maps try to picture the tapering curves of a globe surface onto a flat surface. Usually a map tries to do this by pretending that the globe is a section of tube. It makes the poles, which. oh the real globe dwindle away to nothing, into horizontal lines just as wide as the equator.

To some degree, almost everything on a map of this kind is distorted. The only region given its proper proportion is actually at the equator. On the real globe, the surface curves from the equator, tapering towards the poles. These curves are not shown on the map. Instead, the curved surface is stretched flat. The farther we go from the equator, the wider each section of land and sea must be stretched. Greenland, far north of the equator, is stretched way out of its proper proportion. Compared with land masses nearer the equator, it looks much bigger than it really is.