The True Size Of... map

[sasquatchphotog]

After a bit of map based discussion in another thread, thought might start another one specifically to link this map - Compare Countries With This Simple Tool

Allows you to drag your country around and compare its actual size to that of others.

After playing with it, my main takeaways are that continental Africa is enormous, France is smaller than I thought, and the UK pretty much fits into Texas.

 

[John King]

Interesting.

Seems to be using a Mercator projection, which is not an equal area projection.

 

[John King]

It's my understanding that Australia will fit into Africa about 6 times.

The Mercator projection exaggerates the area of east - west landmasses, while minimising the area of north - south landmasses.

 

[Richard]

I thought I'd try some of the smaller European countries, starting with the Vatican City. I got a bit bored dragging that around the map and left it in the suburbs of Rome. Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Liechtenstein were more interesting to compare. I made a nice group of them in the Med.

-R