GENERAL NEWS

US, India and China ALL fit inside Africa :Try the Interactive map

09/09/2015

The TRUE scale of the Earth: Interactive map shows how the US, India and China could ALL fit inside Africa – and why traditional atlases have got it wrong

Computer developers in Detroit, Michigan, created ‘The True Size Of’ map to highlight the distorted sizes of countries shown on the Mercator projection, which is the map most people are familiar with
Interactive tool allows users to drag countries on top of one another to compare their sizes
It shows the US, China and India can fit inside Africa, and Greenland is smaller than India, for example

It’s difficult to show the spherical Earth on a 2D map, with countries becoming distorted in different ways.

Now two computer developers in Detroit, Michigan, have created an interactive map called ‘The True Size Of,’ which shows how large countries really are compared to one another.

It allows you to search for a country and drag it on top of another one to show how the scale of a country is distorted the closer it gets to the Earth’s poles.

Type in a country below to compare its size to others

Two computer developers in Detroit, Michigan, have created an interactive map, which shows how large countries really are compared to one another. To use the tool above, enter a country’s name in the search box and when it’s highlighted, you can drag it around the map

Most of us have grown up using a world map based on the Mercator projection, which was created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.

Used for centuries, including in forms by Google Maps, it includes imaginary lines to cut all meridians as straight lines – making it easy to use – but this distorts the shape and size of countries near the poles.