Widest Countries

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).

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 ;).

Huh?

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.

Probably better using the longitude of each ends of the countries

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.

You should reverse Algeria and D.R. Congo, they are out of order.

um, you missed INDONESIA?????

Read the instructions: "Continuous spans on the same land mass".

I don't understand how DRC is wider than Australia...

Yes, DRC must be a "major mistake". I would estimate it around 2300km.

Yeah. That would have been funny given the fact that it is over 700km between Adelaide and Melbourne.

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

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.

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...

You're welcome. It's fun to think about that problem (yes, I like maths ;) ).

Don't change a thing...I got 100% on both.

I was also wondering about South Africa. Using your definition, I find 1630km.

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.

Not on one landmass

Very surprised Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan didn't make it.

Same, and Ukraine maybe...?

"Continuous" means, that Island Nations are fully excluded? Kiribati spanns over 4.000 km from east to west.

"on the same land mass"

why can't indonesia is not on the list? indonesia has a very wide area.

Read the notes.

And I thought I was good at geography! On the plus side, I typing in the least gotten country-Morocco. :D How is Indonesia not here though

Read the notes.

Indonesia should make the list. Unless you discount islands.

Read the notes.

The one country I missed was The United States, lol

I can't believe I actually got all of them

Im A person

me too

This quiz only counts continuous landmasses. Indonesia has many islands and none are wide enough to count.

I thought Argentina would be in the list :(

iran

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?

Maybe you're confusing height for width.

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.

I can't believe that I thought to type Niger and Libya before trying Australia. I got it in the last few seconds.

Good quiz.

Namibia?

Almost forgot China... 20/20

Indonesia is at a disadvantage. If it was one landmass, I'm sure it'd make the list.

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 reason for this is that the westernmost point of both countries is far further south than the easternmost point.

I forgot China. I feel stupid.

i wonder how the answers would change if the countries were ranked by difference in degrees longitude between the easternmost and westernmost points

They are, excluding exclaves

The quiz uses horizontal distance, which helps the countries nearer the equator

%100 with 0:20 on the clock. Almost forgot about Morocco

And Ukraine is about 300km away from making this list....

I think you should mention that you've measured diagonally.

14/20 not bad

100%!!! YES!

I would have included Indonesia. I suppose you don't count the ocean distance between the islands, but it seems to me that you should.

hey Quizmaster, what about Indonesia?

Gosh, missed Morocco.

Algeria and D.R. Congo should be switched, as Algeria is listed as 2,110km and D.R. Congo is 2,122km.