True-Scale Map Comparing Russia to Africa Blows People's Minds

MSN ^ | Mar 14, 2022 | Ed Browne

[nickcarraway]

ideo showing the true size of Russia compared to Africa has gone viral on TikTok as social media users learn about the misrepresentation of scale on many world maps.

First posted in late February, the video had gained around 8.5 million views as of March 14 with just under 400,000 likes.

In the video, footage of an interactive map shows an outline of Russia, which at first appears to dominate a huge section of the map. However, as the outline is dragged down towards the continent of Africa and the equator, Russia begins to shrink. By the time the outline of Russia is placed on the equator, it is significantly smaller than it appeared at first and is dwarfed by the continent of Africa.

[avenir]

Africa always wins.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

People don’t know about the difficulty of projecting spherical surfaces onto 2D planes? Not surprising. I guess classrooms don’t have globes in them anymore.

[teeman8r]

so move russia to africa?

tiktok is brilliant.

[MrRelevant]

Wow....my mind is blown. Now lets examine the misrepresentation of politicians as honest , hardworking servants of the people.

[Mr. Mojo]

The Mercator projection makes Greenland look much larger than it is as well. But I’d still like Trump to …convince Denmark to sell it to us when he becomes CIC again.

[Verginius Rufus]

Of course Russia is smaller after all the ice melts.

[Red Badger]

[nickcarraway]

Who said that?

[rktman]

Geographically challenged folks out there take note. And, how much ocean will there be if we get Pangea back together?

[nickcarraway]

Why would Denmark do that?

[Tell It Right]

Deep thoughts, by Jack Handy.

A nation is smaller than a continent.

[Unassuaged]

Sure they do, it is all a matter of what portion is distorted and the incorrect impressions left by flat maps commonly in use today and during our schooling.

[dinodino]

...except in the case of Australia...and possibly Greenland...

[Red Badger]

[Codeflier]

I guess they don’t teach what they taught me in third grade anymore about a 2D map representing a 3D globe. I remember the Greenland example from way back then, that it is much smaller than it looks on a 2D map. I am worried about the level of basic knowledge of our populace. We seem to be getting dumber and dumber.

[Williams]

Lol if they understand how big Africa is, that makes Russia truly huge.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

People don’t know about the difficulty of projecting spherical surfaces onto 2D planes?

My 3rd grade teacher back in the day told us to imagine that the globe in the classroom was a basketball, then to imagine slicing the basketball on one side, and stretching the top and bottom of the resulting skin to make a rectangle. Easy enough to see how the sections at the top and bottom would become distorted and appear far larger than they were.

But I guess most kids are too busy with video games to know what basketballs are.

[Williams]

Did they notice Africa is a continent with a lot of countries, all smaller than Russia?

[Stosh]

Where did they leave Severny Island when they dropped Russia on top of Africa?