Dammit, Mercator!

June 28, 2009 10:05 AM

Help me find a series of maps with various countries superimposed on the continental US.

I used to spend hours poring over atlases as a kid. One of my favorite maps came from a community college course that my grandfather took; it was a map of Africa something like this. Looking back, I really appreciate what an intuitive grasp that gave me of just how HUGE the continent is, when we're usually so accustomed to the Mercator projection.

However, I still find it difficult to get a sense of the sizes of individual countries compared to my own. I'm familiar with common verbal comparisons, e.g. 'France is about the size of Texas,' and the CIA World Factbook is pretty good about providing some less common ones, but this is the sort of thing where a visual is much more helpful. My google-fu is failing me, perhaps because I'm not coming up with a very good search string. This isn't very helpful, because it's cluttered with too many borders and cities and is clearly just two areas from different latitudes of the same Mercator projection. I think this site captures the basic idea of what I'm looking for, although I'd prefer higher quality maps and less in the way of politicization. Something like this map of Alaska, but with India, Japan, Nigeria, etc in its stead.

posted by HumuloneRanger to grab bag (10 comments total)

Google-fu defeated me as well, but this might help a little.

Go to Wolfram|Alpha and type a query like: "India area vs. Nigeria area vs. Japan area", and it will give you the ratios and a visual bar chart for comparison.

Then you can come up with your own "If you properly duplicate and squish Japan, you can fit 8.7 of them inside of India; 3.56 Nigeras would also fit, if Africa's more to your liking."

Or my personal favorite re: No, everything's not bigger in Texas.
posted by foooooogasm at 11:13 AM on June 28

You've probably seen the Worldmapper maps already, but if not.
posted by foooooogasm at 11:14 AM on June 28

Not what you're looking for, but still it's funny.

I'm always amazed at how big Brazil when compared to the continental U.S.
posted by whiskeyspider at 11:16 AM on June 28

Tangentially related, this map comparing NYC boroughs to other states in terms of population.
posted by fings at 11:32 AM on June 28

Does this help?

(Warning: Radical Cartography is an *amazing* time waster / learning tool that has already gained Metafilter's attention.)
posted by Muffpub at 11:37 AM on June 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Found a couple of other neat thingies on Alpha:

Map comparisons, not superimpositions, but they do look to scale.

You can draw a map using a specified projection, so have some confidence that your comparisons are to scale:

  United States Winkel Tripel projection
  russia Mercator projection
  Australia equirectangular projection
posted by foooooogasm at 11:46 AM on June 28

for what its worth i ditched your google terms and tried:

drag and drop map

adding words like country etc... found hundreds of games and interactive toys. might server your purpose. good luck.
posted by chasles at 11:59 AM on June 28

Here's perhaps the original idea, a map of Asia with Europe superimposed, from 1603 A.D.

Everything but what you need, huh? ;)
posted by foooooogasm at 12:09 PM on June 28

Thanks for all the answers. I'm 90% satisfied with Muffpub's link -- I just wish the maps were a bit purtier. The Belgiums of the world just get lost in America's bulk, so it might be useful to compare those to a map, say, of the Northeast. Now I'm searching in vain for good vector images of blank maps with which I can do this project myself. Any help on that front would be greatly appreciated as well.
posted by HumuloneRanger at 12:53 PM on June 28

90% is an A-... good enough for me :) I know nothing about vector maps though, sorry. Another thread?
posted by Muffpub at 12:50 PM on June 30