This is what us Aussies have been trying to say! We’re not that much smaller than the contiguous USA. Yet so often online people act like we’re this tiny island. It’s just our population that’s tiny by comparison.
I’m from the US, and I’ve always pictured Australia as a place nearly the land area of the lower 48 states, with people along the coasts and one city right in the middle.
In the US, we assume the difference in population is due to attrition due to dropbear attacks. We’re not entirely sure where we got that information, but it seemed pretty reliable.
Effectively no. Any projection of a spherical surface into 2D will distort it in some way. If I understand correctly, the Mercator projection (which I think is what we’re looking at) is a cylindrical projection, which preserves latitude but severely distorts longitude near the poles.
I do know that aeronautical charts are conical projections, which is fairly distortion free for the relatively small area they cover, but you can’t lay more than a few of them edge to edge before things stop lining up.
You have distort some thing. Scale or directions. The one most people use keeps directions constant. Ie a 45 degree line between North and east will akways point due northeast no matter where it is.
Contrast that with a map that cuts out large triangle sections or naos that have tge equator wider then poles. These maps make true northeast variable.
No, but there are several better projections. The Mercator is a nautical chart, it was never intended to be used as a general purpose map of the world but for some reason it’s used that way.
Isn’t there a flat map where the actual scale is kept intact? That fucker looks so weird when you’ve been taught the other one your whole life.
https://thetruesize.com/
Fascinating, thanks for sharing!
Australia and China are absolutely massive, wow. They look deceptively small on most maps 🤯
This is what us Aussies have been trying to say! We’re not that much smaller than the contiguous USA. Yet so often online people act like we’re this tiny island. It’s just our population that’s tiny by comparison.
I’m from the US, and I’ve always pictured Australia as a place nearly the land area of the lower 48 states, with people along the coasts and one city right in the middle.
In the US, we assume the difference in population is due to attrition due to dropbear attacks. We’re not entirely sure where we got that information, but it seemed pretty reliable.
That’s a cool site, thank you for sharing it!
Effectively no. Any projection of a spherical surface into 2D will distort it in some way. If I understand correctly, the Mercator projection (which I think is what we’re looking at) is a cylindrical projection, which preserves latitude but severely distorts longitude near the poles.
I do know that aeronautical charts are conical projections, which is fairly distortion free for the relatively small area they cover, but you can’t lay more than a few of them edge to edge before things stop lining up.
You have distort some thing. Scale or directions. The one most people use keeps directions constant. Ie a 45 degree line between North and east will akways point due northeast no matter where it is.
Contrast that with a map that cuts out large triangle sections or naos that have tge equator wider then poles. These maps make true northeast variable.
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There are many different world maps, and some have an intact scale. But they lack in other ways.
Map Men has a good video about it:
https://piped.video/watch?v=jtBV3GgQLg8
No, but there are several better projections. The Mercator is a nautical chart, it was never intended to be used as a general purpose map of the world but for some reason it’s used that way.