What map shows the true size of countries?
The Mercator Map Projection
The Mercator Map Projection with the true size and shape of the country overlaid. One of the best known and commonly used world maps, the Mercator Projection, depicts Greenland and Africa as being roughly the same size.
How big is the United States compared to other countries?
The United States is the world’s third- or fourth-largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and nearly equal to China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted, and how the total size of the United States is measured.
Who is bigger US or India?
United States is about 3 times bigger than India. India is approximately 3,287,263 sq km, while United States is approximately 9,833,517 sq km, making United States 199% larger than India. Meanwhile, the population of India is ~1.3 billion people (993.5 million fewer people live in United States).
Are country sizes on maps accurate?
But despite its ubiquity, the Mercator projection does not accurately reflect the true size of countries given the impossibility of representing a 3D object on a 2D surface. In fact, the projection distorts the size of objects as the latitude increases from the equator to the poles, where the scale becomes infinite.
Why does Africa look smaller on maps?
The world map you are probably familiar with is called the Mercator projection (below), which was developed all the way back in 1569 and greatly distorts the relative areas of land masses. It makes Africa look tiny, and Greenland and Russia appear huge.
How big is UK compared to a state?
According to the map, Alaska is more than seven times the size of the UK, which covers 93,627.8 square miles and comprises four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Oil-rich Texas is almost three times the size of the UK, while sunny California is almost twice as big.
Who has more land China or USA?
China has a land area of 9.3 million square kilometers (3.6 million square miles), which is 2.2% larger than the US land area of 9.1 million square kilometers (3.5 million square miles).
Why does Greenland look so big on maps?
Mercator maps distort the shape and relative size of continents, particularly near the poles. This is why Greenland appears to be similar in size to all of South America on Mercator maps, when in fact South America is more than eight times larger than Greenland.
Is Canada or USA bigger?
Canada has a larger land mass than the United States. The land area of Canada is 3, 855, 103 square miles compared to America’s 3, 794, 083, making Canada 1.6% larger that the States.