• DillyDaily@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          This is what us Aussies have been trying to say! We’re not that much smaller than the contiguous USA. Yet so often online people act like we’re this tiny island. It’s just our population that’s tiny by comparison.

          • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m from the US, and I’ve always pictured Australia as a place nearly the land area of the lower 48 states, with people along the coasts and one city right in the middle.

            • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              In the US, we assume the difference in population is due to attrition due to dropbear attacks. We’re not entirely sure where we got that information, but it seemed pretty reliable.

      • joel_feila@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You have distort some thing. Scale or directions. The one most people use keeps directions constant. Ie a 45 degree line between North and east will akways point due northeast no matter where it is.

        Contrast that with a map that cuts out large triangle sections or naos that have tge equator wider then poles. These maps make true northeast variable.

    • Jimbob0i0@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, it’s not possible to take a 3D surface and to transpose it onto a 2D plane without any distortion.

      • snowsuit2654@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        This is true. There are some projections that show area more accurately, or shape of landmasses, etc.

        For example:

        Many map projections do one thing well at the cost of sacrificing others. For example, the popular Mercator projection (which you’ll see in many US schools and textbooks) is well suited for marine navigation but is exceptionally distorted the closer you get to the poles.

        • Gabu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          is well suited for marine navigation but is exceptionally distorted the closer you get to the poles.

          Which makes perfect sense for its use case - navigating from Belgium, Portugal and Spain to Africa, India and Central and South America.

      • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can easily do it without distortion. The issue is continuity. You’d have to make cuts and effectively unwraped the globe like you would a 3D sphere. Some countries might literally be cut in half, but it would at least be accurate

        • candybrie@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          There will still be distortion, just less. The more cuts, the less distortion. But you can’t make an unwrapped sphere lay perfectly flat.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, but there are several better projections. The Mercator is a nautical chart, it was never intended to be used as a general purpose map of the world but for some reason it’s used that way.