If you open an online map of the location of ships and look at the area around Kamchatka, you will notice one extremely interesting feature. Most ships follow one of three routes: China - USA, USA - China, USA - South Korea. If after that you look at the map again, then many will have a natural question: why are all these ships make such a hook, describing an arc across the ocean, if it would be possible to just swim directly, which is the catch here is he?
There really is a catch. In one way or another, most people know about him, but for obvious reasons they forget almost immediately after graduating from the school course in Geography. The point, of course, is the distortion of the perception of real distances and the location of objects on our planet. The problem lies in the two-dimensionality of the map. Placing an image of the earth on a plane (sheet of paper) greatly distorts the described distances. The distortion occurs in the direction of increase with distance from the equator of the planet.
Thus, the closer the map is to the poles, the more it is stretched. This is because our planet is by no means flat, but spherical. The easiest way to assess the strength of distortion in flat maps in a domestic environment is using an ordinary orange. Carefully peel off the rind from the fruit and try to spread it flat. At its "poles" it will break and diverge. Something similar happens when trying to transfer an image of the planet's surface to a flat map. At the same time, not only the distances and sizes of objects on the map are distorted, but also their location. Just compare the usual map of the earth and how the continents "lie" on it with how they look on the globe.
Herein lies the answer to the question of why many ships from China to the United States sail along Kamchatka. In fact, they just follow the shortest route. Since the closer to the pole, the smaller the distance. On the map, the direct path from Asia to America along the equator seems to us to be a straight line. However, on a globe it is not a straight line, but a curve. In addition, on the globe, America lies noticeably farther from Asia along the equator than it seems to us on the map. All the same applies not only to ships, but also to aircraft.
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Distance distortion rate:
Continuing the topic, read about "Oceanic pole of inaccessibility": how the mysterious Point Nemo appeared, and why old spaceships are sunk there.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/070521/58912/
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