“The Real Size of Countries: The Distorted World Map and Why Greenland is Not as Big as You Think”

2023-04-24 10:22:25

When you look at a map of the world, it is reasonable to assume that Greenland and Africa are similar in size, but in fact they are not.

The British newspaper “Daily Mail” said that the “real size” of countries is not reflected in the famous world map approved in schools and books.

She added, “For example, the area of ​​the African continent alone is 14 times the mass of the northern icy land… but on the map it appears as the same size as Greenland.”

The total area of ​​Greenland is 2.16 million square kilometers, compared to 30.4 million square kilometers as the area of ​​Africa.

It is also known that the area of ​​Africa is three times larger than North America, and larger than Russia as well, and it is also known that India is larger than the Scandinavian countries combined.

However, the common map shows the exact opposite, which researchers attribute to the “Mercator projection”, or the cylindrical projection in cartography, which appeared in 1956, to help sailors navigate the world.

And the “Daily Mail” explained that this projection “gives the correct shapes for the land masses, but at the cost of distorting their sizes in favor of the rich lands in the north.”

And she continued: “Canada and Russia, for example, appear to occupy approximately 25 percent of the Earth’s surface on the world map, when in reality they occupy only 5 percent.”

Data scientist Neil Kay has previously created an illustration showing the popular map and what it should look like in the original.

1682335171
#popular #world #map #wrong. #video #reveals