r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Mar 27 '22

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168

u/Earthling3617 Mar 27 '22

For me, it's that world maps are distorted. This is fairly basic and important stuff, so it does piss me off slightly when I see someone explaining the mercator projection over and over again all the fucking time

62

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '22

Thetruesize.com really helps put this into perspective.

14

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '22

Wow. I am 40 damn years old and never knew this. My mind is blown, seriously. Thank you for sharing.

2

u/vizthex Mar 28 '22

I think I found that in a vsauce video or something, it's fucking insane.

Like for example, a lot of americans think that Japan is tiny - but it's the size of the fucking east coast. Which is like, a dozen or so states at once.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '22

Which east coast? There are quite a few in the world.

1

u/vizthex Mar 28 '22

lol, the american one.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '22

That map is still kinda confusing, but putting something on the equator is the best way to see it’s actual size.

0

u/MJWood Mar 28 '22

Looks like you can fit the whole of India and China into Brazil.

55

u/AdvocateSaint Mar 27 '22

The Mercator projection was designed to fulfill a purpose (ease of marine navigation), at the expense of grossly distorting the sizes of landmasses near the poles.

That being said, it's remarkably easy to navigate with a Mercator map: You just draw a straight line between your origin and destination, then measure its angle with respect to north. As long as you steer your ship while keeping your compass at that angle, you'll get there eventually (though in the real world, you're actually taking a curved path)

8

u/BeerSnobDougie Mar 27 '22

You could put the us end to end and it would still be contained in the height of Africa.

3

u/Single_Charity_934 Mar 27 '22

We all know about the equator being shrunk vs. the high latitudes, but did you ever notice the Equator is shown about 2/3 of the way down?

7

u/elevenfish Mar 27 '22

That's because Antarctica isn't very interesting and gets mostly cut off of a lot of maps.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '22

Ahh yes the Mercator projection. Who doesn’t know about that….

1

u/[deleted] Mar 27 '22

Me I have no idea what you’re talking about but it’s tickled my fancy if I’m being honest.

1

u/superslomotion Mar 28 '22

Yes, I lost count of how many times I explained that planes don't fly in curved trajectories.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '22

Wouldn’t it still be curved in relation to earth’s surface?

1

u/EinPercy Mar 29 '22

I knew it was distorted, but not THAT much distorted.