I first discovered this about three months ago in a reddit comment under 'r/geography', and I still, from time to time, use it and enjoy it. Back then, I posted it here in HN, but zero traction!
Anyway, for those interested in previous discussions, here we are:
I feel very lucky to have grown up with a huge (~ 75 cm diameter) globe as a centerpiece in the living room; I never ended up with Mercator-derived misconceptions in the first place.
fhennig · 7h ago
I really enjoy this! I wish it would also support cities, it would help me get a better sense of the size of a city to compare it to one I'm familiar with already. But I guess city limits are less well defined that country limits. Anyway, great project!
volemo · 1h ago
Surely any city is small enough that projection distortion is negligible? So you can just open cities on two maps side by side and zoom in/out till the scales are equal.
That site only seems lock the zoom value of the two maps together, not correct for distortions. E.g. zoom in on Svalbard on one side and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the other. Svalbard appears larger despite being many times smaller. This means if you zoom into Longyearbyen it will appear several times larger than it should compared to say Kinshasa.
Longyearbyen is a pathological example but it's quite easy to end up thinking a city in the UK is ~1.75 linearly and ~3x by area compared to one on the equator using this site.
xiconfjs · 5h ago
+1 for cities
andrewl · 4h ago
I've been using, and sharing, this site for several years. I think it's excellent. The two things I'd like to see are the provinces, at least in larger countries, and large bodies of water. I'd like to be able to drag Ontario, Lake Superior, the Caspian Sea, New South Wales, and so on, around the way you can with countries and US states.
diggernet · 4d ago
Pretty neat.
One tip it took me a while to realize is that after you tap on a country, the compass rose (now the same color as the country) can be used to rotate it.
But why do countries rotate to the left as you drag them north and rotate to the right as you drag them south?
bregma · 7h ago
It's a widely observed phenomenon that as a country start to go south it moves to the right.
This explains much of the current global political situation.
geor9e · 4d ago
I think part of that is an illusion, since for something bowing upwards, the usualy anchor point of top left seems rotated clockwise.
But there is still a real rotation - look at wyoming or colorado for a perfect rectangle. My guess is the div element isn't quite centered - perhaps too much padding on the right edge, causing the center point to be off to the right. So when it bows you get the rotation bias
hereaiham · 7h ago
What a nice well made tool. I was shocked how massive Algeria is! Maybe larger than half of Europe. And Tunisia which is a tiny country in my head, seems to be not tiny at all.
ljsprague · 9m ago
This is why it's crazy to think there's room for Algerians in Europe.
EA · 5h ago
Algeria is about 23.4% the size of Europe.
ljsprague · 11m ago
I would guess you included Russia and OP mentally excluded it.
xg15 · 3d ago
Mercator projection striking again.
The largest surprise for me (besides the massive size of Africa and South America of course) was that Australia has roughly the same area as the entire US. Somehow I had always imagined it smaller.
HdS84 · 6h ago
I wish schools would stop using it so much. Mercator is useful, yes. But having good size comparisons is much more important for most everyday tasks.
Sharlin · 5h ago
It's useful for navigation in the open ocean without satnav or even a chronometer, which is what it was designed for in the 1500s. Not for much else.
Is the use of Mercator in schools common, globally? Based on what I've read on the internet it's common in the US, but I have no idea about other countries. In Finland I think I only ever saw Robinson or Winkel-tripel type compromise projections. Mercator was maybe used as an example of how projections distort things.
HdS84 · 3h ago
German is Mercator only. Learned about different projection on the internet years after school
scbrg · 5h ago
Huh. Swede here. Went to school in the 80:ies and 90:ies. Only ever saw Mercator. Perhaps things have changed since.
QuesnayJr · 3h ago
It preserves angles, which is what makes it useful in navigation. Mercator is bad at relative sizes for places far apart, but when you look at a small patch shapes are less distorted. For that reason, online maps use a version of Mercator.
xg15 · 4h ago
I wonder if Mercator maps that aren't aligned with the equator would already do the trick. (pinging Randall Munroe)
pif · 5h ago
A flat map on a wall does not take any three-dimensional space. You can't say the same for a globe, though!
mrweasel · 7h ago
Brazil is the largest surprise for me. It's an absolute massive country.
andretf · 3h ago
Wikipedia says contiguous USA is smaller, 95% of Brazil size.
alluro2 · 4h ago
Wow - in my head, Australia was somehow ~20-25% the size of US (I'm from Europe) - really surprising, and shows how misleading the projection can be in this regard.
nasvay_factory · 9m ago
use all the time
flerchin · 5h ago
It's interesting to me how the large countries are roughly similarly sized. Canada, Australia, US, Brazil, China, Russia, India are all within a factor of 2, and it shows when you drag it across eachother. India and Russia as outliers slightly.
lucianbr · 2h ago
This is a tautology. You defined the category "large countries" such that they are as you say, close in size to each other.
Very cool! TIL Greenland is smaller than Argentina.
chrisbrandow · 55m ago
this is so incredible. I'd love if it supported continents.
boxed · 6h ago
So much tech that can be accomplished by just using Waterman butterfly, Peters, Dymaxion or any of a host of other projections.
mijoharas · 6h ago
If you drag something large over so it covers the south pole the shading can invert so that only the region covering the south pole is unshaded.
That's how I proved that the actual size of Australia is approximately 90% of the area of the globe. Who knew the mercator projection could be so confusing! :)
izzydata · 4h ago
It's interesting how Russia appears to only be about twice as large as the United States or China, but on a typical map it looks at least 3-4 times larger.
Every time I end up on this website I'm reminded how small my country, Belgium, truly is.
leonheld · 5h ago
It's about half of my state in Brazil (which is one of the smallest in the country). However, I've been to Belgium many times and it feels bigger. I think the key is the population density: 388/km^2 in Belgium vs 70/km^2 here. Like, yes, it's big, but empty space is truly boring.
lokimedes · 6h ago
I wish Europe (EU) could be selected as a common entity. The continents as well.
FredPret · 4h ago
Would increase the data maintenance requirements from ~0 to >0 since the EU grows and shrinks every so often
amiga386 · 2h ago
Since 1973 there have been 9 changes to EU borders (in 1973, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1995, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2020)
Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or altered! That's not even counting states that have had multiple changes to their territory in that time.
You can see that any translation from 3D sphere to 2D plane will always create a tradeoff of geometry somewhere. E.g. Distorted shapes and lines, torn oceans, etc.
HideousKojima · 4d ago
There's already several, Gall Peters being the most (in)famous. Other than accurately showing size, such maps are pretty useless. Mercator is actually useful for navigation because it maintains angles, all "size accurate" projections have to sacrifice that.
geor9e · 4d ago
You think that doesn't exist? You think the cartographers and mathematicians in Mercater's age were just sitting on their hands?
gus_massa · 2h ago
> The downstream effects would go crazy.
Wars are won with tanks^W drones, not by measuring the area in a map. Laypeople may be confused, but when a government decides to invade another country or add some economical penalty, they know the real data like real-world-surface, GDP, number of weapons, ...
os2warpman · 5h ago
> The downstream effects would go crazy.
I used to say "No human being who has ever lived has made a consequential decision because 'Greenland big brah' and people just need to get over it."
But given the current administration, I...
thraxil · 3d ago
Like a globe?
bregma · 7h ago
Like a globe, but flat, and make sure angles stay accurate so you can still use a compass effectively.
nexle · 6h ago
slightly off topic but it should be a crime for a website hijacking the back button
pif · 5h ago
It should be a crime for web browser letting the back button be hijacked in the first place!
kazinator · 4h ago
It shuld be a crime for web browsers to download and execute code as a matter of loading a page.
arp242 · 5h ago
Nothing is "hijacked"; it just sets the hash to allow permalinks. It should probably actually load the state when pressing back (or replace the current entry instead of adding a new one). But that's just a bug and not malice, as some seem to assume.
russellbeattie · 5h ago
Brazil is huge.
internet_points · 4h ago
omg brazil is huge
jmclnx · 4d ago
Very nice
comrade1234 · 4d ago
No wonder china is investing so heavily into Africa, including having Chinese settle there.
jagged-chisel · 6h ago
Oh my - history spam. I had to long-press the back button to find this HN page again.
I first discovered this about three months ago in a reddit comment under 'r/geography', and I still, from time to time, use it and enjoy it. Back then, I posted it here in HN, but zero traction!
Anyway, for those interested in previous discussions, here we are:
(2020), 556 points, 266 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104787
(2017), 193 points, 66 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13327973
(2019), 155 points, 49 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20898538
(2015), 105 points, 36 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182024
Longyearbyen is a pathological example but it's quite easy to end up thinking a city in the UK is ~1.75 linearly and ~3x by area compared to one on the equator using this site.
But why do countries rotate to the left as you drag them north and rotate to the right as you drag them south?
This explains much of the current global political situation.
But there is still a real rotation - look at wyoming or colorado for a perfect rectangle. My guess is the div element isn't quite centered - perhaps too much padding on the right edge, causing the center point to be off to the right. So when it bows you get the rotation bias
The largest surprise for me (besides the massive size of Africa and South America of course) was that Australia has roughly the same area as the entire US. Somehow I had always imagined it smaller.
Is the use of Mercator in schools common, globally? Based on what I've read on the internet it's common in the US, but I have no idea about other countries. In Finland I think I only ever saw Robinson or Winkel-tripel type compromise projections. Mercator was maybe used as an example of how projections distort things.
That's how I proved that the actual size of Australia is approximately 90% of the area of the globe. Who knew the mercator projection could be so confusing! :)
Since 1973, at least 69 sovereign states have been created or altered! That's not even counting states that have had multiple changes to their territory in that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_da... -> sort by date of latest territorial change
Search for "equal-area" in the list of map projections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
You can see that any translation from 3D sphere to 2D plane will always create a tradeoff of geometry somewhere. E.g. Distorted shapes and lines, torn oceans, etc.
Wars are won with tanks^W drones, not by measuring the area in a map. Laypeople may be confused, but when a government decides to invade another country or add some economical penalty, they know the real data like real-world-surface, GDP, number of weapons, ...
I used to say "No human being who has ever lived has made a consequential decision because 'Greenland big brah' and people just need to get over it."
But given the current administration, I...