The representation of our planet on a planisphere is something deeply anchored in our brains. We have always been taught to recognize countries and continents on flat representations of our world. This two-dimensional representation of the earth was designed to be easily readable and very practical. It dates back to the time of the great navigators who needed to record information from the world they were discovering. But in reality, this way of representing the Earth does not allow us to display the true size of the countries of the world. It is a distorted representation which does not preserve the size of countries, continents, seas, latitude, longitude...
A distorted representation of the Earth
Most countries as we see them on a classic planisphere or on Google Maps are much larger than their actual proportions.
The reason is very simple. As you all know, the Earth is not flat (hello to our flat-earther friends by the way). It is a sphere, or more precisely an ellipsoid. As a result, this complicates things when it comes to representing its surface in 2D, which is why a series of solutions had to be considered in order to obtain a coherent and proportionate representation.
This reproduction of our planet, which is very widely used today, even by tools like Google Maps, is known as Mercator projection. Invented in 1569 by the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator, it has the advantage of being relatively precise and of preserving angles, which makes it a reference tool for sailors. On the other hand, its major drawback is thatit causes a deformation of distances and areas as we move away from the equator. Thus, the closer we get to the poles, the larger the countries become.
The size difference is even more pronounced in the northern hemisphere of our planet, because that is where we find the most submerged land. Thus, countries like Canada or Russia, very far from the equator, have a representation very far from the real size of the countries. Conversely, countries close to the equator like Colombia, Ivory Coast or Indonesia are displayed very faithfully and reflect the real size of the countries.
Visualize the real size of countries
If you don't have a world map available, don't worry, there are various online tools that allow you to see the true size of countries.
This is the case, for example, of the site Engaging-Data which offers a map allowing you to visualize the real size of the countries represented on a background map with the Mercator projection. So you see in blue the size of the countries in Mercator style and in red, the real size of the countries. By hovering the mouse over the countries in red you will be able to see the difference in size between the two. France, for example, is 31.3% smaller in real life than on the Mercator projection. Greenland is 73.9% smaller and Colombia (near the equator) only 0.02%.
The True Size of is another great tool that allows you to compare the actual size of countries around the world by superimposing them.
But in the end, it is still the Mercator projection that dominates the representation of our world and this is also true with most online mapping services. Services like Google Maps, Bing Maps or OpenStreetMaps actually use a variant called Web Mercator or Pseudo Mercator. This projection is made by considering the Earth as a sphere and not an ellipsoid for practical reasons.
So, this is the reason (using a Mercator projection) that online maps like Google Maps do not display the true size of the countries of the world. But this representation is so convenient that it is not likely to change anytime soon!
