Which group of projections derives from projecting the parallels and meridians of a globe onto a tangent or secant cone and then developing the cone into a plane?

• A. Cylindrical projections
• B. Globe
• C. Equal-area projections
• D. Conic Projections

Answer: (D)

Conic projections arise when you set a cone tangent or secant to the globe, project the parallels and meridians onto the cone, and then roll the cone out into a plane. In the developed map, meridians appear as straight lines radiating from a point (the cone’s apex), while parallels become circular arcs. This cone-based development distinguishes conic projections from cylindrical ones, which use a cylinder, and from notions described by equal-area in isolation, which speak to a map’s properties rather than its construction. Variants like Lambert conformal conic and Albers equal-area conic illustrate how this cone-origin approach can be tuned for different mapping goals.