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Our Earth is neither perfectly round nor oval – it is a geoid, which means it is an imperfect sphere with irregularities and depressions. At the poles, it is slightly flattened, while it bulges at the equator. This is precisely why most map projections are inaccurate.

The Challenges of Depicting the Earth

Since the Earth is a geoid, this shape makes it impossible to represent it without distortions on a flat map. To address this issue, cartographers employ various techniques to project the Earth's spherical surface onto a two-dimensional medium. However, these techniques lead to changes in the shape, size, or distance of countries, resulting in numerous distortions, as seen with the Mercator projection.

The Mercator Projection

One of the most well-known map projections is the Mercator projection. Developed in the 16th century by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, this projection offers a clear and practical representation of longitude and latitude as straight lines, which is particularly useful for navigation and surveying. However, there is a catch: this projection significantly enlarges countries at high latitudes. As a result, Greenland and Russia appear much larger on the map than they actually are, leading us to have a distorted perception of the actual size of these countries.

The Gall-Peters Projection

To correct the distortions of the Mercator projection, German historian Arno Peters developed the Gall-Peters projection in 1973. This alternative projection represents countries in proportion to their actual size, making the differences in area between countries more apparent. It presents countries in a more realistic light, thereby improving our understanding of global size relationships.

The True Size

To compare the actual size of countries and minimize distortions from various map projections, one can use the website "TheTrueSize." This platform was developed by James Talmage and Damon Maneice and utilizes data from Google Maps. With "TheTrueSize," users can select a country and drag it to another location on a transparent Mercator projection in the background.

This allows for a direct comparison and shows, for instance, how much smaller Greenland actually is when compared to the size of Australia. On the website, you can try this with any country of your choice. Below, I’ve created a few screenshots from the site to demonstrate this briefly.

Greenland in the Gall-Peters projection compared to the Mercator projection at Australia:

Australia in the Gall-Peters projection compared to the Mercator projection at Greenland:

Canada in the Gall-Peters projection compared to the Mercator projection at Africa:

Russia in the Gall-Peters projection compared to the Mercator projection at Africa:

Even Austria is slightly larger in the Gall-Peters projection compared to the Mercator projection in Greenland:

Closing Words

The inaccurate representation of country sizes on world maps often leads to a distorted perception of the size of certain countries. However, with the Gall-Peters projection and tools like "TheTrueSize," we can gain a better understanding of the actual size relationships between countries.