On the Mercator map, the continental U.S. looks much larger than Australia. In reality, the continental U.S. is only about 200 miles wider than Australia. Describe how you would change the map to reflect this fact.
Due to the fact that the Earth has the shape of a geoid, and if you look at it from space, it will seem that the continents that are on two sides of the earth are smaller than those that are in the middle, and a flat map is a cut of one of the sides of the geoid. That's why there is such an optical illusion.