In this mercator map of north america, canada and alaska together appear larger than the united states and mexico together when in fact they are smaller. what causes this distortion?

f the map is a projection of a round world onto a flat surface.

g the latitude and longitude lines create an optical illusion.

h the northern regions are enlarged because the shallower
parts of the ocean are frozen.

j mountains get flattened on a map so that mountainous
areas look larger than they really are.

The correct answer is F. In Mercator maps, polar zones appear larger than what they really are because the map is a projection of a round world onto a flat surface.

Explanation:

The Mercator projection is a map projection named after the Belgian cartographer Gerardus Mercator, who introduced this projection in 1569. The projection is an important special case of the angular cylinder projection. This means that the angles between different directions on the map are the same as the angles between those directions on the earth's surface. In this case this means, among other things, that all meridians are perpendicular to all parallels.  

In the projection, the longitude and latitude are represented by straight lines such that the longitudinal distance from each other is constant and the distance of the latitudes from one another to the poles increases. A key feature of Mercator's projection is that the spacing between latitudes is stretched exactly in such a way that the latitude and longitude scales remain the same. The scale increases as it moves from the equator to the poles, so that areas near the poles appear much larger on the map than areas of similar size on the equator.