15 True Size Countries Mercator
After Seeing These +15 Maps You’ll Never Look At The World The Same
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The reason why certain countries looks bigger or smaller than others is because of something called the Mercator Projection. Putting a 3D planet on a two-dimensional map was something of a challenge for early cartographers and so a Flemish geographer and cartographer named Gerardus Mercator came up with a solution. In 1569 he designed a map that could be accurately used for navigation purposes, but the downside was that his system distorted the size of objects depending on their position relative to the equator. Because of this, landmasses like Antarctica and Greenland appeared much larger than they actually are.
To show how incorrect our understanding of country sizes is, a website called thetruesize.com lets you move landmasses into different locations. Bored Panda has played a bit on this site, and this is what we found.
164points
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Yvonne Bernal 1 week ago
Size of contiguous United States Not counting Alaska & Hawaii, the 48 contiguous states occupy a combined area of 3.12 million sq. mi. While Australia is 2.99 million sq miles - I never realized they were so close in size!
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Hans 1 week ago
This one looks rather impressive.
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Ema Sklepic 1 week ago
I don't get why the map was done so inaccuratelly? can somone explain?
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Hans 1 week ago
We do not have kangaroos and koala beers over here, though. :( (And, well, also no giant spiders.)
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Brian Hermann 1 week ago
The map of the earth is a 2 d representation of a 3 d object, that's why the size is different, because the map is distorted.
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Hans 1 week ago
This one looks quite surprising!
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Laura Mackenzie-Callow 1 week ago
Nope. The width of South America at its widest point is 2,705 miles (4,353 km), The width of Canada at its widest point is 5,780 miles (9,306 km).
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69points
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Timofey Styopin 1 week ago
Russia ~17100k sq.km China ~ 9600k sq.km
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68points
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Ray Rosch 1 week ago
But California has SUN!
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Péter Lehoczki 1 week ago
Now it even contradicts the very first picture...
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40points
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Gordon Weir 1 week ago
It all has to do with putting a round object onto a flat, rectangular presentation. Locations near the poles get stretched and distorted, appearing much larger. The point of the map is that IF Japan was in that particular geographic location (closer to the North Pole), it would look much larger when transcribed onto a flat map.
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38points
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Yvonne Bernal 1 week ago
And with global warming, this is rather alarming . . .
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Yvonne Bernal 1 week ago
Wholly Molley! No wonder I get so many customer service agents in India.... that is one HUGE country.
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Mitch Pantharen 1 week ago
Canada: The Second largest Land mass, and the largest unified country in the world.. NO the USA is not even remotely close to being the same size.