Can you explain how you define the "width" of a country? I find some of your estimates quite generous indeed, especially for countries with high latitudes. For example, I find about 8000km for Russia and 5200 for Canada (which would be behind China).
For the Russian mainland, I get a longitudinal span of 191.3 degrees. In your calculations did you take into account that Russia's easternmost point is actually in the western hemisphere?
And yes, we take into account latitude, but use a generous estimate. I use the latitude of either the easternmost or westernmost point, whichever is closest to the equator.
You're right, I also made a slight mistake. Wikipedia tells me that the westernmost point of mainland Russia is at 27°E, and the easternmost at 169°W, which would give a span of (180°-27°) + (180°-169°) = 164°, am I wrong? The wiki page does not give the latitude of those points, but I tend to choose an average value on the territory, which would be close to 60°N for Russia. So I guess we would finally get something like 9000km... the only sure thing is that Russia is by a long way the widest country ;).
The concept of "wide" means looking only from an east-west perspective. I've done a Longest Countries quiz that looks at the greatest distance from one end of each country's mainland to the other, regardless of compass direction. There is also means less debate about how to calculate the distances.
I am personally surprised that Morocco made the list and South Africa didn't. Could you check that, cause it doesn't seem right to me. Otherwise an interesting quiz.
The longest straight line across Canada I can get without transiting the sea is 4696 km, and for Russia it's 6623 km. It's tricky though, because the shortest east-west distance can be quite a bit longer than the shortest distance between the easternmost and westernmost points!!! especially for Russia. Try it out on a globe to see what I mean.
The problem is, that the lines that can be considered as straight lines on a sphere are great circles, which parallels are not... That's why I maintain that the width of a country is not well-defined.
After a bit of thinking, I'm sure that one must use the great-circle distance to get a somewhat pertinent result. It can prove to be surprising... for example, if you take a value of 164° for Russia's longitude span and a latitude of 60° for the extremities of the arc, it gives a value of... only 6600km, which is interestingly close to the value given by Jerry928. I will compute the values for the other top 5 countries. I use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_distance
Strangely, the USA are the most puzzling country, because the westernmost and eastermost points are both at high latitude and don't provide the highest distance between points on the west and east boundary of the 48 states... Once again, I don't think this is very well defined. It's a much more complicated problem than expected.
Anyway, here are my estimates: 1) Russia: 6200km ; 2) China and Canada: both very close to 5000km ; 4) USA: between 4400km and 4700km ; 5) Brazil: 4250km
Oh, and this is quite helpful to understand the difference between the orthodromic distance, which is the only true distance on a sphere, and the loxodrome (or rhumb line), i.e. a straight line on a Mercator projection. http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/sites/genevieve_tulloue/Meca/RefTerre/Orthodromie1.php
I did find a couple errors in my calculations, but I think they are closer to accurate now. For Russia, I get a longitude span of 164.017 degrees. I used the latitude of the easternmost point of 54.65. Approximating a degree as 69.172 miles, gives me this formula for the span: 69.172 * 164.017 * cos(54.65) = 6564.08 miles. Convert to kilometers to yield 10,564 kilometers.
Like I said above, it's not reasonable to use the rhumb line distance (or at least, it is artificial). If you go from (27°E, 54,5°N) to (169°W, 54,5°N) by the shortest possible way on the surface of the earth, it will be 7800km long, not 10500. Seriously, my link above really helps realizing that.
And yes we are using the rhumb line, even though it may not be the shortest line between two distances. Your great circle for Russia likely goes over the north pole, which explains why we are so far apart for that country. I think that violates the idea of traveling east-west, which really only works on a flat map.
Ok, that's your quiz, you can of course make that choice, but I must admit that I don't like that. For me, if the line presents a maximum in latitude, it's sufficient for the idea of traveling east-west...
I was also thinking South Africa is wider, just did a simple straight line measurement from Alexander bay(just south of Namibia border) to the kosi river mouth (just south of the mozambique border) = 1630
To be widest I presume means East to West along a latitude line and not crossing other countries in doing so. The best I can get on Google Earth is just over 1,600 km......... much like the answer given by Quizmaster.
Above the quizmaster explains that s/he takes the easternmost and westernmost points of the country on a single landmass and calculates the distance between them. If that's correct, then Lesotho doesn't really matter here.
I may be wrong, but just by eye Norway looks like it should be on this quiz. It looks wider than Turkey and Libya. Is this just because of distortion on my map to make countries that are further north look wider, or should it be on here?
No, I mean width. Just by longitude it has a 26 degree east-west span compared to 19 for Turkey and 16 for Libya (approximately). I am not sure it is really possible to measure such a distance in miles and this is probably why there is no secondary source to back the quiz up. You can measure a distance in miles but on a spherical earth you can't really say how much of that is the east-west or the north-south direction.
Besides being high up north (which makes it look extra big on usual maps). I dont think the most western point and eastern point of a country is used, but the biggest distance east-west on the same latitude. So some countries might have a south-west north-east alignment so their most western and most eastern points span a lot of °. But nowhere straight across east-west. Hope this makes sense. Drawing it would be so much easier/clearer.
Clearly the question/parameters of the question is poorly defined. The distance between the eastern-most point to the western-most point of both Norway and Sweden would surely make them eligible to be on this list.
The only way they wouldn't would be if you are measuring a single, longest UNBROKEN span of the country, which you don't define in the question. Update your question if you must, because otherwise I see an error in this quiz.
It's only east-west distance. Because Norway and Sweden are both quite *tall* as well that part of the distance must not be counted. But I agree that the question is not really defined in the quiz. I think there probably is a way to measure the distance so that the countries closer to the poles are not disadvantaged but I'm not sure if this is what was used or not.
The note says "continuous land mass," and much of Indonesia is separated by the ocean. I think that once you wade into that territory (excuse the pun), it gets dicey. You'd probably have to add Micronesia and Kiribati too.
Argentina should be on here as the distance from Glaciar Perito Moreno in South-West Argentina and Comandante Andresito in North-East Argentina when the latitude is averaged out as 38.0828 degrees South and only the longitudes are different the distance is 1667km according to NOAA's distance calculator based on coordinates. Therefore Argentina should be on this list.
If there was a very narrow country going from the equator to the north pole and just missing the north pole in the right way, this quiz would give it a width of about 20 000 km even though it would only be about 10 000 km long.
Anyway, here are my estimates: 1) Russia: 6200km ; 2) China and Canada: both very close to 5000km ; 4) USA: between 4400km and 4700km ; 5) Brazil: 4250km
On the plus side, I typing in the least gotten country-Morocco. :D
How is Indonesia not here though
The only way they wouldn't would be if you are measuring a single, longest UNBROKEN span of the country, which you don't define in the question. Update your question if you must, because otherwise I see an error in this quiz.
CONTINUAL LANDMASSES Indonesia is made up of islands