Size It Up: Geography
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The true size of countries
World maps stretch everything near the poles, which is why Greenland looks as large as Africa when it is about fourteen times smaller. Here, every outline is drawn at the same scale, so you compare real extents.
Each round gives you a reference country or feature with its real length, and asks you to size another one correctly.
What the usual world map gets wrong
The Mercator projection keeps angles right for navigation and pays for it by inflating everything far from the equator. Africa covers about 30 million square kilometers, enough to hold the United States, China, India and most of Europe together, yet it looks no bigger than Greenland on a classroom map.
Long, thin countries are misjudged too. Chile stretches about 4,300 km from north to south and averages under 200 km in width. Russia spans roughly 9,000 km from west to east. And Brazil is larger than the contiguous United States.
How to estimate a country
- Start from a country you know well and ask how many times it fits.
- Remember the latitude. If you know a northern country from a Mercator map, shrink your mental image of it.
- Check the axis of the round: north to south height and west to east length can be very different for the same country.
FAQ
Which measurement is used for a country?
The longest extent of the outline along the axis shown in the round, either its height from north to south or its length from east to west.
Where do the country outlines come from?
From Natural Earth, a public domain map dataset. Every outline is drawn at the same scale, so what you compare is the real extent.
Is Madagascar bigger than France?
Yes, slightly. Madagascar covers about 587,000 square kilometers and metropolitan France about 551,000.