To which family does the Mercator projection belong?

• A. Cylindrical projection
• B. Conical projection
• C. Stereographic projection
• D. Orthographic projection

Answer: (A)

Mercator projection belongs to the cylindrical family. It achieves its map by projecting the globe onto a cylinder that wraps around the Earth along the equator and then unrolling that cylinder into a flat rectangle. In this approach, meridians and parallels appear as straight lines, creating a rectangular grid. Parallels spread farther apart as you move away from the equator, a characteristic feature of cylindrical projections. This construction is why it’s classified as cylindrical, and it’s also known for preserving angles locally, which is why navigators like it for plotting courses. The other families use different surfaces—conical projections wrap the surface onto a cone, stereographic projections map from a point onto a plane, and orthographic projections imagine viewing the globe from an infinite distance—so they don’t produce the cylindrical grid seen in Mercator.