Rethinking Geography

One thing that always amazes people when they look at a traditional map is how big some countries are, like Russia, Greenland, and Canada. And also how small some continents are, like Africa.



Now how many of you know that is a lie? That the countries and continents you generally see on a map are not drawn to their true size?

This is due to the fact that we live on a globe. And with a N-S axis all such depictions tend to loose their true scales depending upon their location on the globe? Things in reality compress at the poles, and stretch at the equator.



This is actually a much more accurate map, drawn to actual distance scale. Notice how much in this depiction Russia and Greenland become squashed, and how much larger Africa appears.

To see how this works if a part of the world moved, examine Greenland shifting South.



The size of Greenland does not change, simply it's location while keeping it the actual size. Amazing how our perception has been fooling most of us for all of our lives.

You can blame Gerardus Mercator for that issue. However, his map skills did make marine navigation a lot easier.

Oozlefinch said:

One thing that always amazes people when they look at a traditional map is how big some countries are, like Russia, Greenland, and Canada. And also how small some continents are, like Africa.

Now how many of you know that is a lie? That the countries and continents you generally see on a map are not drawn to their true size?

This is due to the fact that we live on a globe. And with a N-S axis all such depictions tend to loose their true scales depending upon their location on the globe? Things in reality compress at the poles, and stretch at the equator.

This is actually a much more accurate map, drawn to actual distance scale. Notice how much in this depiction Russia and Greenland become squashed, and how much larger Africa appears.

To see how this works if a part of the world moved, examine Greenland shifting South.

The size of Greenland does not change, simply it's location while keeping it the actual size. Amazing how our perception has been fooling most of us for all of our lives.

Click to expand...

Oozlefinch:

Are you suffering from the Mercator Projection Blues? Maybe this will cheer you up. In one sense all countries on Earth are, for all intents and purposes, infinitely small and insignificant when viewed in comparison to the vast scale of the known universe! The mathematics of limits and infinity are great equalisers from tiny Andorra to great Mother Russia!

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

In GIS class (geographic information system), using ArcView, we were able to try many projections. It's spooky.

ecofarm said:

In GIS class (geographic information service), using ArcView, we were able to try many projections. It's spooky.

Click to expand...

I remember doing that when I learned ArcView back in 1996. In fact, one of the projects we had to do was to turn the traditional Mercator map sideways, aligning it on an East-West Polar scale, with Greenwich and the Equator as one pole, and the other at 180-Equator (roughly between Russia and Alaska).



That one really blows the mind, because everything is in the exact same location, at the exact same scale. The traditional Mercator alignment is simply turned on it's side.

Oozlefinch said:

I remember doing that when I learned ArcView back in 1996. In fact, one of the projects we had to do was to turn the traditional Mercator map sideways, aligning it on an East-West Polar scale, with Greenwich and the Equator as one pole, and the other at 180-Equator (roughly between Russia and Alaska).

That one really blows the mind, because everything is in the exact same location, at the exact same scale. The traditional Mercator alignment is simply turned on it's side.

Click to expand...

While the fun was looking at large scale projections, such as the entire Earth, the usefulness of changing projection was in regional and local projections. It made the data illustrated more clear and gave a more accurate sense of proportion.

I learned Arcview ~98, undergrad. I used it again in my phd program.

The Mercator Projector contributed to the Red Scare by making the Soviet Union appear much larger and menacing than it really was. And, to top it off, a lot of the "expanded" part of Russia was sparsely populated tundra.

RobertU said:

The Mercator Projector contributed to the Red Scare by making the Soviet Union appear much larger and menacing than it really was. And, to top it off, a lot of the "expanded" part of Russia was sparsely populated tundra.

Click to expand...

No, that is just human nature.

We are mostly "wired" to consider things from an East-West perspective. Most of the major conflicts dating to antiquity tend to run along an East-East axis. And this dates all the way back to the Barbarian invasion of the Roman Empire.

The Romans, the Greeks, most conflicts have been East-West, not North-South. So that is naturally how we look at things.

If the Cold War was really an issue, things would have gone North-South. After all, most of the Bombers and Missiles would have come fro Russia over the North Pole into the US. That is by far the shortest distance for any such attack to occur. The distance from USSR-US was far shorter in that trajectory than across the Pacific-Atlantic arcs.

Yes you are right about a globe on a flat map. But, the earth is wider at the equator because of the moon

Yo, you want me to really blow your mind: