Pick any country and drag it around to compare its real area with others. It’s a neat way to see how the Mercator projection warps map sizes. Built with the World Atlas GeoJSON + country shapes (feel free to replace the data with your own).

Posted by Sudden_Beginning_597

12 comments

  1. I liked how Canada, Greenland, and Russia changed sizes as you drag them to the equator.

    The Mercator projection really does distort the sizes.

    I used your playground site.

  4. Wait, Alaska alone is like 1/3 of the contiguous USA? God Damn. I did not know that.

    I knew it was huge, but still.

  8. your Antarctica model is bad, its kind of circular, not a rectangle.

  9. Now I am curious how Pangea looked like because moving these masses around doesn’t seem to fit.

  10. Great lil app, nice work. Fun idea, cohesive, intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing interface.

  11. Since this is a Mercator projection, it maintains north-south lines as vertical. Alaska’s border with Canada is true north-south (following 141°W). So when you move Alaska, it should expand and contract horizontally and vertically, but shouldn’t its eastern edge remain vertical when you drag it into the southern hemisphere?

  12. Still using Mercator projections for the countries though, which is confusing. For example, Canada’s North is still very large compared to the rest of the country, which is confusing.

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