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Asked by Aysa1212 to Chris, Joanne, Kathryn, Kieran, Sarah on 9 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by 472furk49.
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Chris Werner answered on 9 Nov 2017:
I’ll answer that question in part by posing another, how easy would it be if your wanted a map of the world and all your had was a globe? Not easy at all! The 3D sphere (not really a sphere but close enough!) of the world is projected onto a 2D surface (i.e. pages of a book/poster) for ease of use.
However because its harder than it looks to project a sphere onto paper, the actual sizes of the countries on the standard map are not accurate! For example, Greenland looks massive when its really not as big as it looks, whereas Africa is actually much larger than it looks. Most of Europe can fit inside Sudan!
Here’s a fun link for you which looks at the actual size of different countries https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTU4Nzg0NDk.NTI3MDA0OQ*MzE0ODQ5ODA(MTA2NzI0ODA~!CONTIGUOUS_US*MzcxMzM4Nw.MjU4ODU1MDM(MTc1)MA~!IN*Mjg5MDA1MA.NDc4MjE4OA)MQ~!CN*MTMxOTgyNzU.MTE2Mzc5NTg(MjI1)Mg~!EG*MjMwNzUxMA.MTUwNTIxNg)Mw
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Chris Werner answered on 9 Nov 2017:
I’ll answer that question in part by posing another, how easy would it be if your wanted a map of the world and all your had was a globe? Not easy at all! The 3D sphere (not really a sphere but close enough!) of the world is projected onto a 2D surface (i.e. pages of a book/poster) for ease of use.
However because its harder than it looks to project a sphere onto paper, the actual sizes of the countries on the standard map are not accurate! For example, Greenland looks massive when its really not as big as it looks, whereas Africa is actually much larger than it looks. Most of Europe can fit inside Sudan!
Something wrong with my previous comment so posting it again. Here’s the link https://thetruesize.com
Comments
Chris commented on :
Also the reason the world is round is because of gravity!