8/27/2020 Interactive Map Shows You The Actual Size Of Your Country, Not The Lie You've Been

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Interactive Map Shows You

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8/27/2020 Interactive Map Shows You The Actual Size Of Your Country, Not The Lie You've Been Told By Maps | IFLScience

Focusing on a single country helps to see effect best.#dataviz #maps #GIS

#projectionmapping #mapping pic.twitter.com/clpCiluS1z

— Neil Kaye (@neilrkaye) October 12, 2018

However, there's nothing quite like playing around with a map for yourself
and finding out how big your own country is in relation to everything else.
One interactive map that's been doing the rounds over the last few days is
The True Size Of... You can select the country you're interested in
comparing and drag it over other areas of the map to see how big it really
is. 

I highly recommend you first compare it to Greenland, just to see how

disproportionately large it is on maps, before losing the next few hours of
your life.

Russia is another one - always shown as a huge sprawling country. Nope.

pic.twitter.com/lYHmlYFcbD

— Tits McGee (@Scientits) June 6, 2020

The map is based on the Gall-Peters projection, a rectangular map
projection that prioritizes giving areas the correct sizes in relation to each
other over being useful as a navigational tool. So enjoy, don't use it to
navigate the Atlantic.

Interactive Map Shows Where You'd Pop Up If You Dug Straight Through
The Earthhttps://t.co/GeRgix2WY9 pic.twitter.com/LYgyhp6jJe

— IFLScience (@IFLScience) June 8, 2020

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BRAZIL IN RELATION TO THE US AND CANADA. THETRUESIZE.COM Did

The map you grew up with has been lying to you about the
true size of countries. 

Representing a 3D world on a 2D map is always going to Ancient People

Really Not See The
end up with some issues and some compromises. No
By James Color Blue?
matter how accurate you try to make it, you will end up
Felton
with stretched areas, squashed countries, or else parts of This
08 JUN 2020,
the map cut out altogether. 17:31 Map

The map you are likely familiar with is one based on the
Mercator projection, created by cartographer Gerardus Mercator in Reveals The
1569. It's a cylindrical map projection, in which you place the globe into a World's Many,
cylinder and then project each point of the map onto a corresponding Many New And
point on the cylinder. Meridians (imaginary vertical lines going through the Re-Emerging
Earth from the North to South pole) are mapped onto vertical lines equally Diseases
spaced apart on the map, and circles of latitude (imaginary horizontal lines
from East to West) are mapped onto equally spaced horizontal lines.
WEEK IN
The Mercator projection is good for navigation because it represents
courses of constant bearing as straight segments, meaning ships have to SCIENCE
course correct for the curvature of the Earth less frequently. However, it The IFLScience
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also results in distortions of size and shape. 
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In cylindrical maps – as is the case with the Mercator projection – areas

around the equator remain roughly accurate, but the further you move
from the equator, the more distorted and inflated landmasses
become. Essentially, this is why Greenland appears gigantic and is
represented as the same size as Africa, when in fact it's 1/14 as big. The
animation below gives you a quick look at the distortions in the map you're
used to.

Animating the Mercator projection to the true size of each country in

relation to all the others.
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