Show this map to Trump. He will not want Greenland anymore.

Greenland: I was in the pool!

Map Men most entertainingly explained this

I'll add that we use the mercator projection because it preserves shapes but not scale. There's other projections that preserve scale but not shapes.

This post didn't need to include an ad for x-dot-com.

This is why Trump wants Greenland so bad. He sees it, and says "It's big, I want it. Get it for me!" and gets all Veruca Salt about it.

All because he doesn't understand what a Mercator Projection is, on account of he beat up some nerd to do his homework that day, like every day.

Hmm, so the Mercator projection makes things look larger than they are? I think I've got an idea for another use for it... 😏

Ragebait

This just in: projection requires distortion.

I don't think that's the true size. You'll find all those countries are actually a lot bigger than presented on that map and scaled down to fit on a screen

There also an interactive version of this, also a bunch of copies (not sure if this is the original, but i believe so): https://thetruesize.com/

Relevant West Wing Scene

I need a Mercator Projection in my pants.

Maybe show this to taco trump and he'll realize Greenland is small and level leave it be.

Edit fixed typo

Yes, but blue (Mercator) preserves direction and shape, which were all that really mattered for navigation by sea, so Mercator was a fantastic projection for centuries.

And we still use it today for smaller scale areas, since it does a remarkably good job at preserving all 4 features (shape, area, distance, and direction) close to the map origin line. Universal Transverse Mercator is a system that has 60 zones of Mercator turned sideways.

The reason it's Transverse is because, unlike lattitude depending on a defined equator, longitude has an arbitrary meridian, so by turning the map sideways we can move the distortion point, and any map area that doesn't stray too far East or West will be very accurate.

Think of trying to map something like Chile or Florida, where the area of interest is pretty far North to South, but not East to West.

Why is the difference only extremely pronounced in the northern hemisphere? If I understand the math behind the projection correctly, the equator should be true scale, and things should vary more the further north AND south you go.

This image shows the extreme southern latitudes to be almost equal to their true area. Is the image wrong, or am I misunderstanding something about the projection?

How can it be the true size if it’s still a projection on a 2d surface? I thought could only see the true size on a 3d globe.

How much do you wanna bet Trump wouldn't be so gung ho on Greenland if he saw this map? He probably thinks he is going to double the size of America.

If I have to shower in gym class I want the mercator-projection showers.

Go Robinson or Winkel.

https://futuremaps.com/blogs/news/top-10-world-map-projections

Is Africa the only one here not stuffing socks down their trousers?

Did it cut out the European portion of Russia?

Doesn't that kinda make Canada look smaller than the US?

The oceans are huge.

Damn Indonesia is huge.

I don't think Tasmania is right