Nº 002 The map is lying

Greenland Isn't Huge. The Map Is Lying.

On a Mercator map Greenland looks as big as Africa. Africa is about 14 times larger. We moved Greenland to the equator on a globe, keeping its true size, and re-projected it. The shrink you see is the real Mercator distortion (sec² of latitude), not an artistic effect.

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Sources

• Mercator projection (1569; conformal; Greenland vs Africa ×14)
• Our own spherical-area calculation on Natural Earth 50m data: Africa 30.0M km², Greenland 2.16M km², DR Congo 2.34M km² (published figures: 30.37M, 2.166M, 2.345M).