🌍🌍Steem Geography facts 2: The true size of countries in the maps.

Good day, Steem Geography community!! Today I'll show you a new geographical "toy" that I discovered online and spent my free time playing with. It is a website that displays the true size of each nation. The website's address is thetrusize.com. As seen in the map below, even though Russia appears to be larger than Africa, in fact it is not.

Map Made through thetruesize

🤔Are you feeling confused? Don't worry I am here to explain!

🎀Marked in pink, you can see Russia as seen in Mercator projections, that is, in the form of a map that we see almost everywhere, where what is closer to the poles, is distorted and appears much larger.

🔷Marked in blue you can see Russia (I turned it upside down) As it REALLY is comparing to Africa (much smaller than the massive continent!)

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN:

🗺️The Mercator projection map was developed because it was the most useful form of map for navigation, but it has one major flaw: it distorts the sizes - the closer something is to the poles, the LARGER IT LOOKS! We find Mercator projections on 99.999 percent of the maps we come across

👉In Mercator projections, the farther we are from the equator, the greater the distortion! Commonly, what is closer to the poles looks * much * bigger than it is!

🌎Since the planet is spherical, when you imprint the surface of a spherical object on a rectangular plane map JUST CANNOT BE Achieved WITH PERFECTION. It will somehow "lose" , on the sizes, shapes etc.

🗺️When I first saw a gall-peters map (a form of projection that respects size proportions but distorts shapes), I was astonished by the actual size of the African continent! I've included a gall-peters map below so you can figure it out for yourself.

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Below we can see the Mercator map that we are familiar with.

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***NOTE: Russia is still the world's largest nation, with 17 million square kilometres but it is not as big as it appears on maps!! Africa has a total area of 30 million square kilometers!