I have a Van der Grinten projection map as my dining room table, which is close to the Mercator. Russia dwarfs it by quite a lot, and Canada and USA are both larger as well. I suspect on the mercator that Russia would still be largest and Canada still bigger, largely due to them being fairly close in latitude. Greenland/Denmark probably come in third?
How so? I think it does a pretty good job at representing relative shape. And if you think about it, in schools, you are mostly talking about your own country, so it makes sense to know what shape your country is. It sacrifices size, but honestly there is no good option, other than a plain old globe
Was it really? It mostly enlarges Canada and Russia. Most of Europe is at a similar latitude as Kazakhstan and Mongolia, which are already smaller on the Mercator projection. European colonialism can be blamed for many things, but I think with the maps, sticking with the unperfect system we still use today was a matter of convenience rather than malice.
It's a great map if you use it for what it was intended to be used for. It was made so explorers could go from one place to another in a straight line on a map, rather than a curved one, because such a course is much easier to follow on sea. Anyone using the projection for anything else just knows nothing about geography.
For anyone wondering why so many red countries appear on the list, the numbers would be changed a lot depending on where the map was cut off near the poles. Because the true Mercator projection is infinitely tall, and all countries occupy a finite space on it, every country would shrink by 100% if the projection was cut off at 90° N/S.
Almost every country, except for those in the far north, appears smaller in the Mercator Projection than on an equal area map.
Antarctica, on the other hand, is more than 6 times larger on the Mercator Projection.
If we counted Greenland, it would appear as the 3rd largest country, ahead of the United States.
Would it take first place?
19/20