[andymcsherry]

These comparisons come up all the time, and the issue is the Mercator projection makes Europe looks much larger than other countries on most maps. Much of Europe lies at a more extreme latitude than to the rest of the world. Basically nothing is at the same latitude in the Southern hemisphere and the only comparisons in the Northern hemisphere are Russia, Canada and Greenland. Other than Greenland, those countries don't generally get compared because they are gigantic in their own right, despite being much smaller than the appear on normal map projections.

[thraxil]

Every time this discussion about different projections comes up, I just want to ask: has no one ever seen a globe? When I was a kid, we had them in classrooms and I had one in my bedroom. I never got the impression that that was unusual or unique. Have globes just gone wildly out of fashion in recent years?

[simonh]

You can't see both Mexico and Europe on a globe at the same time, but you can on a map. Globes are great, but the ones you see in most households are quite small with very little detail.

Atlases can help by showing geographical regions in appropriate projections on each page, but again you can't easily see full page appropriate projections of both Europe and Mexico at the same time because they'll be on far separated pages.

[okdood64]

What about 2 globes.

[simonh]

Sure it's possible to do that, but this discussion is about the experience people actually have with maps and how that affects their expectations. I don't think it's common for people to do that.

[skrause]

> You can't see both Mexico and Europe on a globe at the same time, but you can on a map.

Of course you can, try it in Google Map's globe view.

[simonh]

I actually did, but they both so distorted by perspective that I doubt many people have done that to build an understanding of their relative size in practice.

[yencabulator]

You can put your fingers on the extremes of Europe, and then move your hand over to Americas.

[simonh]

You can do, but how many people actually do that in practice when building an understanding of the relative size of regions, relative to looking at them on a flat map?

[agos]

yeah, computers and smartphones have made globes wildly out of fashion

[mjevans]

It's too bad Maps doesn't behave more like 'Earth' does / did (?). I haven't even installed Google Earth in years, but now that I zoom a maps window all the way out I'm sad it doesn't become a sphere projection in 3D.

[markdown]

You don't have to install it anymore.

https://earth.google.com/web/

[flohofwoe]

Weird, when I zoom out on https://www.google.com/maps/ it becomes a globe, I thought that's the default behaviour, but maybe I changed a setting at some point?

[kzrdude]

Google maps zooming out does become a globe for me (Firefox/Linux), why not for you? I see it has an on/off option for globe in the layers selection.. let's check in incognito.. aha, it's non-globe by default!

[mjevans]

Click Layers > Click More > Lower left, check the Globe View.

That's buried levels of undiscoverable.

[jollyllama]

They take up more space; a map can be folded/rolled up for storage or hung on a wall. Games like risk also much easier to do with a 2d map.

[MadSudaca]

Another thing that’s interesting about Europe is that it’s approximately at the same latitude as Canada, with a climate that is substantially warmer. If it was as cold as northern North America, humanity would have taken a completely different course.

[melx]

Yyy not sure if Northern Europe where much of "development" happened on the Old Continent as a whole, is "substantially warmer" than NA.

[rendall]

Definitely is. New York is at the same latitude as Spain but tracks in winter temperature with Southern Finland. Scandinavia is way up in the same latitudes as the Canadian Northwestern Passages but is not nearly as cold.

[melx]

Spain is classified as Southern Europe.

[MadSudaca]

The majority of people in Scandinavia live in the south, where the temperatures are much milder. However, I think that even in the north of these countries, temperatures are still not as bad as in much of Canada during winters.

[dsfyu404ed]

Would you rather wear a toga and sandals in Bangor, Maine or Bangor, Wales?

[laurencerowe]

This seems to be a west coast of ocean vs east coast of ocean effect. Seattle and Vancouver have a similar climate to Paris and London.

[kzrdude]

I don't know why this discussion is never ending, but I'm fed up with the Mercator projection. I hope things move along. Google maps has done their part, when you zoom out you get a globe, but others need to follow even more.

[agos]

where should things "move along" towards? the mercator projector has some very important features, what would be the alternative?

[standardUser]

National Geographic maps use the Winkel tripel projection:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkel_tripel_projection

[flohofwoe]

I already posted it somewhere above, but this is the world map we used in school in the 1980's, definitely much less 'radical' than Mercator:

https://i.redd.it/xcydn8owtzj61.jpg

[kzrdude]

That is or is very similar to Winkel tripel

[kzrdude]

The projection is used way more often than those features are needed, so use other alternatives like <favourite projection here> anytime you reasonably can.

[bagels]

Dymaxion.

[Tagbert]

When I was a kid in grade school we had lots of different maps using different projections on the walls and in our text books. We learned about how Mercator is good for navigation and other maps are better at showing comparative size. It makes for a good topic in geography. Have we just given up on education?

[flohofwoe]

Is Mercator actually still used anywhere outside of clickbait blog posts?

For reference: this is the world map I know from school in the 1980's which is much less distorted than 'plain old Mercator':

https://i.redd.it/xcydn8owtzj61.jpg

[inkcapmushroom]

U.S.A. uses Mercator pretty much exclusively, from education all the way through TV, news, and movies.

[avgcorrection]

> These comparisons come up all the time, and the issue is the Mercator projection makes Europe looks much larger than other countries on most maps.

Daily reminder that Europe is a nanocontinent, not a country.

[likeclockwork]

Western Eurasia.