I still remember the first time I learned about this. I was watching the West Wing (Season 2 Episode 16[1] which explains the problem pretty quickly) for the first time in the early 2010's and was absolutely blown away that we'd never been taught about this in public school (U.S.A.). Having graduated High School and a couple of years through undergrad, and just then realizing that my entire perception of the relative size, and in some cases position(!), of the continents is basically just wrong. It was actually a generally useful thought exercise though, because it really forced me to confront the fact that I need to consistently reflect on whether my previous assumptions on even basic topics hold true.<p>I'm not sure it would be worthwhile to advocate for changing the default projection at this point due to the logistics, but at least teaching kids about the issue, which can be covered in no more than a few minutes and is obviously not super complex, just so they're aware of it seems totally worth it!<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY</a>
Great project!<p>I'd just like to mention an obsolete advantage of the Mercator projection, which I assume played a large role in its spread.<p>Back before radio, GPS, and accurate clocks, navigation in cloudy days was really, really hard.<p>Mercator allowed you to draw a line in your map between origin and destination, and its angle with the North in the map would match the physical angle you'd need to keep, with a compass, to go from origin to destination.<p>It would not give the straightest possible path, but away from the poles it was close enough.
A few years ago I made<p><a href="http://projections.charemza.name/" rel="nofollow">http://projections.charemza.name/</a><p>... click and drag a Mercator map to rotate the world "before" the Mercator projection is applied, to see a whole range of "equivalent" projections. None of them look like the world to me, but they're just as valid.
In this day of ubiquitous 3D acceleration, I think any digital map that lets you zoom out more than a hundred miles or so should be an accurate 3D projection.<p>Students should be primarily shown a globe. A physical one, if possible!<p>In fact, paper maps in study books showing a large part of the world should also be accurate 3D projections.
If you put Canada so that Victoria, BC is in Portugal then Newfoundland is in Iran. Most Finland is covered. Ottawa is roughly in Egypt.<p>Canada is actually really huge, is what I'm saying here.
What really surprised me is that the US is three times the size of India! (2.5x not counting Alaska.) I guess I'm used to hearing that the US isn't actually as big as we like to think so I over-compensated in the other direction.
It might have been the Governor of Colorado who said if you laid a drape down over the state - and let it cover the mountains and valleys - and then stretched it out, it would be bigger than the state of Texas.[1]<p>So it got me thinking for a while what the "true size" of a country is if you were to stretch it out. A mountainous country or region would technically have a larger surface area.<p>I started thinking a bit about how you would go about calculating that. You would need some sort of topographical map and then run a bunch of surface area calculations (approximations) between topography lines. Sounds like a fun project but I never got around to look into it much..<p>[1] <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/02/615975703/not-my-job-colorado-gov-john-hickenlooper-gets-quizzed-on-2020" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2018/06/02/615975703/not-my-job-colorado...</a>
A fun surprise for me was to take any small-ish country near the equator - eg colombia or the Dem. Rep. Congo - and drag it up to northern Europe. Turns out that many of them are bigger than the entirety of Scandinavia.
Holy crap Iceland is teeny tiny. More than 2.5 times smaller than Gabon.<p><a href="https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ2ODE4OTY.MzI1NDkxOA*MzE5OTU2OTc(NjY4MzE5Nw~!IS*NzcwNzM4Mw.MzI3MjUxNDM)Nw" rel="nofollow">https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTQ2ODE4OTY.MzI1NDkxOA*...</a>
Requisite West Wing scene[1] on the subject (which is probably always going to be my top YouTube search because it’s fantastic).<p>[1]: <a href="https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/vVX-PrBRtTY</a>
The good thing is that Google Maps has switched to a 3D globe view when zooming out. Now even zooming to the latitude extremes, you get a good projection. Thanks to vector tiles :)
I added in some missing pieces [1]. There are probably others.<p>[1]: <a href="https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTI3MTAzMDM.NDg4OTk2MQ*MzAxMTgxMzM(MTMzOTI1NDc~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MTAxOTUzNjU.MjU1MzY4MTk(MTc1)MA~!IN*NTM3ODEwMg.NzMzNTExOQ)MQ~!CN*MTAzNjg2NTY.Njg2NTM4OQ(MjI1)Mg~!US-AK*OTg2MTA1Ng.MjAwMTA0MTc(MTk4)Ng~!US-HI*MTUwNjQ3ODQ.MTg5MjE1ODg)OA~!PR*ODgzNTIxNQ.MjQ4NDI5NDk)OQ" rel="nofollow">https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTI3MTAzMDM.NDg4OTk2MQ*...</a>
I almost hit 40 before hearing about the Mercator projection. My wife flew to Zambia for some charity work, and mentioned how long her flight from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe was. I was confused because I thought the distance between the two was about the same as the distance between the US east and west coast, and she pointed out that Africa is actually huge.
The same idea can be conveyed in one image with no interactivity: <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/74/5e/12745ea9bb8bdf3892141023e30a98a6.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/74/5e/12745ea9bb8bdf389214...</a>
Is Mercator projection really that popular? I think I've mostly seen the Equirectangular projection and the Robinson projection (or a similar one).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection</a>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection</a>
I knew Alaska was big, but holy crap! If you move the continental US from the southern most Alaska Islands to the top, it stretches nearly the entire east coast.
There is a line in Kingsley Amis's <i>The Old Devils</i> running something like "More and more, Alun's life was coming to consist of being told what he knew, at dictation speed." A book on maps that I got in elementary school laid this all out clearly. Every few years since about 1980, someone announces it as amazing news.
I have a huge terrain based map on my wall. I took me a while to find a place I could a map of that size and in that kind of format.<p>Unfortunately I had to make it Mercator, even if I don't really like that so much.<p>If anybody know a place (Europe) where I can order high quality terrain maps, if possible where I can select the region and have lots of options, that would be nice.
It's fun comparing Luxembourg. It is roughly the same size as the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts where I live:<p><a href="https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTMzMzUzODU.MTMxMDk2NjQ*MTA5NzU0ODk(MTA1MDYzNzM~!LU*NTg0OTM2Ng.MTE0MTQ3MTU)Nw" rel="nofollow">https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTMzMzUzODU.MTMxMDk2NjQ...</a>
Cool tool. I must say that I didn't expect to be surprised by anything here, and initially I wasn't. Yea, Africa is huge, I know. But then I grabbed the average size American state I live in south Central America for no particular reason and I was really shocked at how much larger some of those countries were than I expected.
The Map Men covered a number of different map projections last year: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtBV3GgQLg8&list=PLfxy4_sBQdxy3A2lvl-y3qWTeJEbC_QCp" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtBV3GgQLg8&list=PLfxy4_sBQd...</a>
I spent three years driving 54,000 miles around Africa. [1]<p>At 30 million square km, it's more than 3 times bigger than the US (which is 9.8 million square km including Alaska)<p>This gives a brilliant visualization of how enormous it truly is. All of the US, China, India and a good bit of Europe fit inside it.<p><a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-true-size-of-africa/" rel="nofollow">https://www.visualcapitalist.com/map-true-size-of-africa/</a><p>[1] youtube.com/theroadchoseme
So the old saying that Japan could fit inside California is wrong?!<p><a href="https://www.laweekly.com/these-countries-could-fit-inside-california-map/" rel="nofollow">https://www.laweekly.com/these-countries-could-fit-inside-ca...</a>
Would be worth limiting the latitude scale to physically-real values LOL <a href="https://i.imgur.com/EmYKxVL.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/EmYKxVL.png</a>
Another point that is often overlooked is that geographical _flat_ size is misleading and often irrelevant.<p>The distance/area of 1000 kilometers gives you very little information without topographical/logistical context.
i.e. knowing that it takes a 5 hour long drive between point A and point B or that area C has 2 million people living in it and has big undeveloped forest density is much more relevant than saying it's 200 kilometers apart or it's 100 kilometers m2 big.<p>TL;DR: landmass alone is very uninteresting and misleading.
Technically nice, but could be called a violation of the principle of least surprise that countries change in size as you drag.<p>Why not <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection</a> ?