The actual size of the countries on the world map

If you look at a world map, some countries seem to be the same size, while in reality the distances can be very different. On the website The True Size they thought about exactly this! You can see countries in relation to each other (and it's almost too much fun to play around with them).

Australia vs. Europe

Example Australia: This continent in the southern hemisphere is huge, but that's hard to imagine. But if you put Australia over Europe ... Wow! Try it out yourself!

The traditional worldmap

With this website you can also see that the generally accepted world map (you probably have one at home) is actually incorrect! Greenland seems much larger than the United States, but as you can see, this is not the case at all. This also applies to Russia, which of course is a very large country, but about the same size as the north of the African continent. And that looks a lot smaller on the map;)!

Why is the traditional worldmap incorrect?

Actually, this is very easy to explain: In 1596, the Mercator projection was developed so navigators can navigate, that's the map you see everywhere. Since the earth is round, it is almost impossible to develop a map on a flat surface without the countries changing their shape. For this reason, Greenland is so vast and the Antarctic looks like a huge continent on the world map of the Mercator projection.

A Japanese artist from a company for geometric designs has designed a World Map, on a flat surface that really comes close to reality. You'll probably get a little shock if you have a tattoo of a world map...

Which countries surprised you the most? See for yourself how big they are in real life and book your flight ticket.