Actual Real Proportion World Map
You may be surprised at what you find.
Actual real proportion world map. One square inch anywhere on the map represents 158 000 square miles on the earth s surface. It was used by both rand mcnally and the national geographic society at one point. And now with the power of technology endeavors like the true size map are also helping to. For starters africa is way bigger than it looks and greenland isn t nearly so vast.
Visually speaking canada and russia appear to take up approximately 25 of the earth s surface when in reality they occupy a mere 5. Creating a map of the world presents a fundamental problem how to turn the three dimensional sphere of the earth into a flat two dimensional image. Take a look at a map today and you re likely to see that north america is larger than africa alaska is larger than mexico and china is smaller than greenland. But in reality china is four.
The image you re picturing will most likely resemble the mercator projection a 2d representation of the globe created in the 1500s which most maps you commonly. The peters projection wall map is a valuable educational tool because of its realistic portrayal of proportion. Mercator s map inadvertently also pumps up the sizes of europe and north america. The map was an attempt at a compromise between distorting the areas of continents and the angles of coordinate line.
Think about a map of the world. Hajime narukawa a japanese architect and artists created what is deemed the most accurate world map narukawa used the method authagraph projection to make the map which divides it into 96. The robinson isn t as extreme however taking the form of a much more gentle oval. Strebe wikimedia commons bonne.
People s ideas of geography are not founded on actual facts but on mercator s map british cartographer g. All areas both land and water are of relatively proportional size. We all know most maps of the world aren t entirely accurate. In 1569 the flemish cartographer gerardus.
A great tool for educators. Morrison warned in 1902. Is greenland really as big as all of africa. But a designer in japan has created a map that s so accurate it s almost as good as a globe and it s probably one of the best estimations you ll see of the real size of countries.
Drag and drop countries around the map to compare their relative size.