The Sizes of Australia and Greenland

Chesterton

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Yes, which is why Canada looks way bigger than it is on the Mercator projection, and why Antarctica looks ridiculously enormous.

If you go to the website @Occams Barber linked to, you can select and move a country around and see how it grows and shrinks based on its distance from the equator.

-CryptoLutheran
Yeah, I just looked up the approximate width of Patagonia, then compared it with distances I'm familiar with in my state. Patagonia looks about twice as big as it actually is.
 
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Chesterton

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I'd always heard that there were visual problems with maps, but I never knew the size difference had to be so extreme. Representing a thing as 3 times bigger than another, when it is actually 3 times smaller, seems not just a distortion, but an alternate reality, lol.

Needless to say, this thread has been quite traumatizing to me. My whole life I've believed in the fact that Greenland was the size of Africa, and I behaved accordingly. What other delusions am I laboring under!? My perception of reality is shattered. The walls of my life are crumbling around me. I'm calling my lawyer. I'm going to sue Rand McNally for infliction of emotional distress.
 
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sjastro

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Does it?


c0019023-800px-wm.jpg
Great another image of Australia with the island of Tasmania missing.
We will now get the expected retaliation from the Tasmanians.

205d2369dd9f9b64cf2fee6d78447da8.jpg
 
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Occams Barber

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But those aren't pictures of the whole earth.


You can't get a single picture of the 'whole' Earth since half the Earth will always be facing away from you. Even taking a series of pictures and stitching them together won't work since the apparent shape of any feature changes as it moves towards or away from you around the curve of the Earth.

What you need is a movie/video.

OB
 
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Tom 1

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Wikipedia says the total area of Australia is 2,969,907 square miles, and the total area of Greenland is 836,330 square miles. So Australia is well over three times bigger, yet when you look at the Google Earth image or a map it looks the opposite. It looks like you could fit 3 or 4 Australias into Greenland.

Google

iu


What am I missing here?

The Peterson projection focuses on getting the relative sizes right:

1920px-Gall%E2%80%93Peters_projection_SW.jpg
 
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essentialsaltes

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But those aren't pictures of the whole earth.

The Earth is sorta ball-shaped, so satellites can only see about half of the surface at a time. But I assure you that is a picture of the whole earth.

The same way this is a picture of a whole soccer ball.

soccer-ball-on-green-grass-wall-mural_1200x630.jpeg
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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I'd always heard that there were visual problems with maps, but I never knew the size difference had to be so extreme. Representing a thing as 3 times bigger than another, when it is actually 3 times smaller, seems not just a distortion, but an alternate reality, lol.

Needless to say, this thread has been quite traumatizing to me. My whole life I've believed in the fact that Greenland was the size of Africa, and I behaved accordingly. What other delusions am I laboring under!? My perception of reality is shattered. The walls of my life are crumbling around me. I'm calling my lawyer. I'm going to sue Rand McNally for infliction of emotional distress.
It's pretty strange to see the true sizes compared - Australia and USA are roughly comparable, and Russia is roughly twice their area... o_O
 
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essentialsaltes

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The soccer ball gave me an idea. What would a soccer ball look like in different projections? Sounds like a lot of work, but this is the internet and someone has already done it.

Obviously, all the black spots are the same size, but here's a Mercator soccer ball:

football_mercator.png
 
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Occams Barber

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Chesterton

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Occams Barber

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essentialsaltes

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Thank you Messrs. Obvious. But the thread's about map-making, not photography.

Okie dokie. Glad we can agree it is not about satellite photos, which do not show the problem you are pondering.
 
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sjastro

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Needless to say, this thread has been quite traumatizing to me. My whole life I've believed in the fact that Greenland was the size of Africa, and I behaved accordingly. What other delusions am I laboring under!?.
The medical solution for delusion is to go on a vacation to places such as Greenland or Australia.
 
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Tom 1

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What other delusions am I laboring under!?

You left a big gate open there dude. As an American you may have been led to believe that peanut butter is a weird gooey substance with sugar in it. A friend of mine was once asked by one of your compatriots if Edinburgh is 'in Paris'. There may be many other things.
 
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Estrid

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Wikipedia says the total area of Australia is 2,969,907 square miles, and the total area of Greenland is 836,330 square miles. So Australia is well over three times bigger, yet when you look at the Google Earth image or a map it looks the opposite. It looks like you could fit 3 or 4 Australias into Greenland.

Google

iu


What am I missing here?

Try this. Get a ruler and draw a proposed shortest
airline route from LA to Hong Kong on your map.
Then take a string and find the shortest route,
on a globe.
 
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durangodawood

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Try this. Get a ruler and draw a proposed shortest
airline route from LA to Hong Kong on your map.
Then take a string and find the shortest route,
on a globe.
Yeah when I was a kid and would fly from San Fran to London I was always amazed to learn we'd fly over the arctic.
 
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Estrid

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Yeah when I was a kid and would fly from San Fran to London I was always amazed to learn we'd fly over the arctic.

The LA- HK route doesn't even cross the Pacific, it hugs the
coast all the way.
 
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Chesterton

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In post #18 you said this in response @essentialsaltes post showing you satellite pictures of the Earth
Why do you think we both assumed you were talking about photography ('pictures')?
I don't think that. I think you both pretended to assume I was talking about photography. But I could be wrong.
 
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