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The True Size Of
- hereaiham 2y agoWhat a nice well made tool. I was shocked how massive Algeria is! Maybe larger than half of Europe. And Tunisia which is a tiny country in my head, seems to be not tiny at all.
- EA 2y agoAlgeria is about 23.4% the size of Europe.
- ljsprague 2y agoI would guess you included Russia and OP mentally excluded it.
- ljsprague 2y ago[flagged]
- shaftway 2y agoWhy would Algeria's land size have anything to do with that? Algeria is more than 80% desert and has a population of ~46 million. Non-desert area accounts for ~480k km^2 out of their ~2400k km^2 land . Europe has far more livable space than Algeria does. Spain is pretty comparable with a population of ~48 million in 505k km^2. I get that there are political reasons, but "Algeria is big so Algerians shouldn't need to leave" is a pretty surface-level observation.
- pjc50 2y agoIf the French didn't want Algerians to be French they shouldn't have invaded there in the first place.
- ljsprague 2y agoSo it's like revenge? The French have to accept revenge?
- hereaiham 2y agoI don't think the poster meant it as a revenge thing. France at some point made it illegal to deny the Frenchness of Algeria, you could go to prison for this back then. The two countries have had a very long history of close relations with its all ups and downs, and many French lived in Algeria and Algerian lived in France. I have no connection to either of those countries I'm just interested in history.
- internet_points 2y agoomg brazil is huge
- jmclnx 2y agoVery nice
- comrade1234 2y agoNo wonder china is investing so heavily into Africa, including having Chinese settle there.
- theandrewbailey 2y agoNon sequitur much? Geographic size differences alone don't drive investment and migration patterns.
- BannedUser1 2y ago[dead]
- peakskill 2y agoWe need a new world map that accurately portrays countries by size. The downstream effects would go crazy.
- HideousKojima 2y agoThere's already several, Gall Peters being the most (in)famous. Other than accurately showing size, such maps are pretty useless. Mercator is actually useful for navigation because it maintains angles, all "size accurate" projections have to sacrifice that.
- Affric 2y agoI mostly agree but it’s comical you have put “size accurate” in quotes but have said Mercator “maintains angles” without any qualification. It preserved rhumb lines.
- geor9e 2y agoYou think that doesn't exist? You think the cartographers and mathematicians in Mercater's age were just sitting on their hands?
- thraxil 2y agoLike a globe?
- jasode 2y ago
- diggernet 2y agoPretty neat. One tip it took me a while to realize is that after you tap on a country, the compass rose (now the same color as the country) can be used to rotate it. But why do countries rotate to the left as you drag them north and rotate to the right as you drag them south?
- geor9e 2y agoI think part of that is an illusion, since for something bowing upwards, the usualy anchor point of top left seems rotated clockwise. But there is still a real rotation - look at wyoming or colorado for a perfect rectangle. My guess is the div element isn't quite centered - perhaps too much padding on the right edge, causing the center point to be off to the right. So when it bows you get the rotation bias
- bregma 2y agoIt's a widely observed phenomenon that as a country start to go south it moves to the right. This explains much of the current global political situation.
- imzadi 2y agoI think it's the other way around. As a country moves to the right it starts to go south.
- Terr_ 2y ago"West takes you In, In takes you East, East takes you Out, Out takes you West, North and South bring you back again." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees
- xg15 2y agoMercator projection striking again. The largest surprise for me (besides the massive size of Africa and South America of course) was that Australia has roughly the same area as the entire US. Somehow I had always imagined it smaller.
- mrweasel 2y agoBrazil is the largest surprise for me. It's an absolute massive country.
- andretf 2y agoWikipedia says contiguous USA is smaller, 95% of Brazil size.
- lucasoshiro 2y agoNot only in area, but also in population: about 200 million, 2/3 of the USA population. The population of our 5 largest cities (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Fortaleza, Salvador, Belo Horizonte) is bigger than the 5 largest cities of the USA (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix): https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_munic%C3%ADpios_do_Brasil_acima_de_cem_mil_habitantes_(2022) https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_munic%C3%ADpios_do_Br...
- HdS84 2y agoI wish schools would stop using it so much. Mercator is useful, yes. But having good size comparisons is much more important for most everyday tasks.
- pif 2y agoA flat map on a wall does not take any three-dimensional space. You can't say the same for a globe, though!
- Sharlin 2y agoIt's useful for navigation in the open ocean without satnav or even a chronometer, which is what it was designed for in the 1500s. Not for much else. Is the use of Mercator in schools common, globally? Based on what I've read on the internet it's common in the US, but I have no idea about other countries. In Finland I think I only ever saw Robinson or Winkel-tripel type compromise projections. Mercator was maybe used as an example of how projections distort things.
- Vagantem 2y agoGall Peters Projection scene (From "The West Wing" S2E16) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVX-PrBRtTY
- lproven 2y agoI was thinking of posting this too. I've been using _TrueSizeOf_ for years...
- fhennig 2y agoI really enjoy this! I wish it would also support cities, it would help me get a better sense of the size of a city to compare it to one I'm familiar with already. But I guess city limits are less well defined that country limits. Anyway, great project!
- xiconfjs 2y ago+1 for cities
- lpribis 2y agoUse this site for that https://acme.com/same_scale/ https://acme.com/same_scale/. It lets you compare any two map views at the same scale.
- zamadatix 2y agoThat site only seems lock the zoom value of the two maps together, not correct for distortions. E.g. zoom in on Svalbard on one side and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the other. Svalbard appears larger despite being many times smaller. This means if you zoom into Longyearbyen it will appear several times larger than it should compared to say Kinshasa. Longyearbyen is a pathological example but it's quite easy to end up thinking a city in the UK is ~1.75 linearly and ~3x by area compared to one on the equator using this site.
- volemo 2y agoSurely any city is small enough that projection distortion is negligible? So you can just open cities on two maps side by side and zoom in/out till the scales are equal.
- triceratops 2y agoI wish it would support sub-national entities (states, provinces, territories) outside of the US too. US-state-only support is kinda frustrating.
- edelans 2y agosame here, I was looking for a tool that does exactly that a few weeks ago. Ended up just comparing 2 google maps with same zoom level, but it's not practical at all. Open to any suggestion you may have!
- jagged-chisel 2y agoOh my - history spam. I had to long-press the back button to find this HN page again.
- mijoharas 2y agoIf you drag something large over so it covers the south pole the shading can invert so that only the region covering the south pole is unshaded. That's how I proved that the actual size of Australia is approximately 90% of the area of the globe. Who knew the mercator projection could be so confusing! :)
- nexle 2y agoslightly off topic but it should be a crime for a website hijacking the back button
- pif 2y agoIt should be a crime for web browser letting the back button be hijacked in the first place!
- kazinator 2y agoIt shuld be a crime for web browsers to download and execute code as a matter of loading a page.
- arp242 2y agoNothing is "hijacked"; it just sets the hash to allow permalinks. It should probably actually load the state when pressing back (or replace the current entry instead of adding a new one). But that's just a bug and not malice, as some seem to assume.
- hoten 2y agoIt actually is augmenting the history so "hijack" is correct. Weird that back isn't restoring the state. Just stays the same for me.
- boxed 2y agoSo much tech that can be accomplished by just using Waterman butterfly, Peters, Dymaxion or any of a host of other projections.
- dmd 2y agoI feel very lucky to have grown up with a huge (~ 75 cm diameter) globe as a centerpiece in the living room; I never ended up with Mercator-derived misconceptions in the first place.
- blueflow 2y agoPeeling oranges (the way bored kids do) also teaches you this.
- globular-toast 2y agoI recommend everyone with even the slightest interest in the world or the need to understand things like time zones, seasons, flight paths etc. to get a globe, even just a small one. You just can't understand a non-Euclidean space by looking at projections and 3D globes on screens don't seem to cut it either.
- codethief 2y ago> You just can't understand a non-Euclidean space by looking at projections Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, from a mathematical perspective you absolutely can. In fact, manifolds[0] are defined in terms of local coordinate charts. :-) [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold
- goodcanadian 2y agoI rarely/never saw mercator projection as a kid. I think I probably saw mostly Robinson projection[1] as it seems that is what national geographic was using at the time. Mercator looks so completely wrong to me; I don't know why so many people use it. It seems to have gotten more common. Anyway, I agree that a globe is best. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection
- lokimedes 2y agoI wish Europe (EU) could be selected as a common entity. The continents as well.
- pif 2y agoI wish people learnt that (a) European Union is not Europe, and (b) Europe is a continent.
- lproven 2y agoEurope is a relatively small and arbritrarily-defined part of Eurasia. Geologically or geographically, there are 7 continents: Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, South America, and the mostly-sunken Zealandia.
- FredPret 2y agoWould increase the data maintenance requirements from ~0 to >0 since the EU grows and shrinks every so often
- amiga386 2y agoSince 1973 there have been 9 changes to EU borders (in 1973, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2020) Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or altered! That's not even counting states that have had multiple changes to their territory in that time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_date_of_formation#Sortable_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_da... -> sort by date of latest territorial change
- FredPret 2y agoI guess I should’ve learnt by now that no project - done right - is truly easy
- flerchin 2y agoIt's interesting to me how the large countries are roughly similarly sized. Canada, Australia, US, Brazil, China, Russia, India are all within a factor of 2, and it shows when you drag it across eachother. India and Russia as outliers slightly.
- russellbeattie 2y agoBrazil is huge.
- Raztuf 2y agoEvery time I end up on this website I'm reminded how small my country, Belgium, truly is.
- leonheld 2y agoIt's about half of my state in Brazil (which is one of the smallest in the country). However, I've been to Belgium many times and it feels bigger. I think the key is the population density: 388/km^2 in Belgium vs 70/km^2 here. Like, yes, it's big, but empty space is truly boring.
- Nursie 2y agoHere in Australia there's a farm thats almost 80% the size of Belgium... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station
- izzydata 2y agoIt's interesting how Russia appears to only be about twice as large as the United States or China, but on a typical map it looks at least 3-4 times larger.
- andrewl 2y agoI've been using, and sharing, this site for several years. I think it's excellent. The two things I'd like to see are the provinces, at least in larger countries, and large bodies of water. I'd like to be able to drag Ontario, Lake Superior, the Caspian Sea, New South Wales, and so on, around the way you can with countries and US states.
- ivanjermakov 2y agoRelated: amazing video about map projections: https://youtu.be/bpp0xCknQAQ?si=AL-Qt36AeUH_oSeI https://youtu.be/bpp0xCknQAQ?si=AL-Qt36AeUH_oSeI
- redbell 2y agoReally cool work, love it! I first discovered this about three months ago in a reddit comment under 'r/geography', and I still, from time to time, use it and enjoy it. Back then, I posted it here in HN, but zero traction! Anyway, for those interested in previous discussions, here we are: (2020), 556 points, 266 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104787 (2017), 193 points, 66 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973 (2019), 155 points, 49 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898538 (2015), 105 points, 36 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024
- notorandit 2y agoTry Ukraine
- turtlebits 2y agoVery cool! TIL Greenland is smaller than Argentina.
- chrisbrandow 2y agothis is so incredible. I'd love if it supported continents.
- nasvay_factory 2y agouse all the time
- GuB-42 2y agoI have been told so often about how the Mercator projection misrepresents the size of countries that seeing it like this is underwhelming to me. It turns out that even when put in the middle of Africa, Russia is still massive. And even without the projection, Greenland is not small either, which, in a sense, makes Denmark the largest European country by far.
- zanellato19 2y agoYeah, the Mercator projection misrepresents a lot of the Global South. So of course Russia is still massive.
- GuB-42 2y agoI'd say it mostly misrepresents Europe. A combination of Europe being generally close to the pole, so the projection makes it look big, and the large number of small countries and fine geographical features, giving it a high concentration of details.
- blueflow 2y agoWhy the South? What about the North? Symmetric globe? And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation, but the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not?
- jkrems 2y ago> Why the South? What about the North? Symmetric globe? The globe isn't symmetric when it comes to these terms. They don't refer to the actual two hemispheres, split at the equator. The "south" contains the equator and the "north" ends way before the equator. > And why is the shrinking considered a misrepresentation, but the enlargement of high latitudes apparently not? Because being overrepresented (looking bigger) is typically an advantage. Both are misrepresentations but the direction matters. Some of this is only a real problem if geographical area and population are correlated. Which, at least in broad strokes, is true here.
- imzadi 2y agoI hate that I can't go back without long pressing the back button and selecting from the history.
- pards 2y agoVery cool site, but... It looks like each drag-n-drop changes the history. I had to click the back button about 10 times to get back to HN.
- liveoneggs 2y agochile is really fun to move around
- maxglute 2y agoI had to pare down a optmistic peru itenurary once I realized the country was like 1/3 the size of Ontario.
- dmurray 2y agoI would have thought I could reasonably tour Ontario, but holy shit, it's 3 times the size of Peru?
- maxglute 2y agoNo I messed up msg, it's larger than Ontario but looked 1/3 the size on Google maps, so I had to trash stupid optimistic itenuary.
- MattSteelblade 2y agoPeru is 500k square miles, while Ontario 415k square miles.
- maxglute 2y agoSorry I messed up the sentence, I meant it looked 1/3 size of Ontario but was roughly ontario sized so I had to pare back.
- pjc50 2y agoA decade ago I managed Cochabamba -> La Paz -> Cusco -> Lake Titicaca -> train to Machu Picchu -> Lima in two weeks, which felt like hitting the major spots (including some of Bolivia) at a reasonable pace. Did involve some very small planes though, and the very unusual "climb to land" of La Paz.
- foota 2y agoDid anyone else expect this to be about the C++ sizeof operator?
- toredo1729_2 2y agoHaha, same here
- cik 2y agoI'm more surprised that anyone didn't
- shric 2y agoI thought it would be about the C sizeof operator.
- theandrewbailey 2y agoHuh, Russia is almost the size of South America. 17,098,246 km2 vs 17,840,000 km2 (95.8%)
- sxv 2y agoit's australia engulfing europe for me.
- lilyball 2y agoOpening this starts with 3 countries showing (US, China, and India), overlayed on top of Africa. However, the country shapes are wrong. They're the shapes of their respective countries, but they've been relocated without any mercator distortion. Which means if I try and drag it back onto the country it belongs to, it doesn't fit anymore, as that distorts it (well, India has very little distortion so that one works, but China and the US don't).
- re 2y agoI think the issue you're encountering is purely due to those two countries starting with a rotation, and not any incorrect handling of distortion. You can adjust the rotation of a country by clicking it and then dragging the compass rose, which will allow you to perfectly overlay them back on their starting positions.
- lilyball 2y agoOh! That was very much non-obvious, as there was no textual description of that like there was for dragging countries around and deleting them. I see if I actually watch the video it shows the compass rose at the very end, but I normally skip video content.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hoten 2y agoPulling the US up to nearer where Russia is, or Russia down to near where US is, is amazing to see how the familiar shapes distort to something nearly unrecognizable.
- markdown 2y agoI've always loved this. The coolest thing is to overlay Kiribati over the continental US.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoFor the quantitative size of, go to https://mapfight.xyz/ https://mapfight.xyz/
- fifticon 2y agoMaybe we could give Trump the northern part of Greenland, as visible on this map? As you can all see, the northern part of Greenland is HUGE, which is why I think it is the best part to give him. The small insignificant SOUTHERN part however, he doesn't have to deal with, we can leave it to the greenlanders (appropriate, given that they are already called greenlanders.) Heck, we might even call the northern part HUGELAND! /s :-)
- jvvw 2y agoI have a very different sense for the size of countries since starting to play Geoguessr as the number of points that you get depends on distance. You start to appreciate things like how big Brazil and Indonesia are and other things like how far the Atacama desert stretches. You can guess in the Atacama and still lose a lot of points!
- martopix 2y agoI recommend trying Antarctica! It's tiny compared to the Pacific. I didn't expect it to fit into the Indian ocean.
- ale42 2y agoReally nice, it would be wonderful if in addition to drag-and-drop it would be possible to rotate the shapes!
- clircle 2y agoYou can rotate by clicking on the compass.
- lucasoshiro 2y agoI never thought that Panama and Ecuador would be so big when compared to European countries