Discussion: Which is bigger: Sweden or Madagascar?

I made a fun little website through which you can compare the relative sizes of countries/continents.

Because so many of our world maps use Mercator projection, which distorts relative area, it's sometimes surprising to see how a country near the equator actually compares to one closer to the poles. Given that lots of people here love maps, I thought it might be of interest.

Wow! That is a fantastic web page. Thanks for creating and sharing it!

very cool! which is bigger? the continental US or Libya, Sudan, Egypt and Algeria put together?

Which is bigger, Europe or your average AFL footballer's ego?

Cool!

Noticed a typo in the first line of the third paragraph at the bottom which I thought you might want to fix: "...it was depited on the map..."

Fixing typos on the internet? That'd be a first.

Thanks Canadian for the edit - the typo is fixed now!

Suzanne, is there any way to compare individual states to countries? Such as California to Sweden or Madagascar?

sevin>> When it comes to orienteering I´d say Sweden is first.

tRicky's individual state is often provocative.

ja, javisst, bubo ;) but I was saying in terms of size... :-D I tend to use California as a reference to describe how big Sweden is (http://mapfight.appspot.com/california-vs-se/calif... states also help folks understand things such as France is smaller than Texas (http://mapfight.appspot.com/texas-vs-fr/texas-us-f...). But Suzanne's website is cooler than mapfight thus my inquiry :)

I (who know both places pretty well) have always found that comparison between California and Sweden less than ideal. Both in size and population (but not in orienteering:-) the swedish lands corresponds much better to states in the middle of the US (as the german states corresponds pretty well to states in the north east). If I recall correctly:
Louisiana~Götaland
Kentucky~Svealand
Montana~Norrland
Area is not always the best description of size in Europe since the countries are so irregular (a lot of water). For example driving from the south to the north of Sweden is the same distance as san diego-seattle (although in driving time you will get well into british columbia since there are no interstates in northern sweden).

What your favorite map projection says about you:
https://xkcd.com/977/

driving from the south to the north of Sweden...
You can go through the middle of mainland Norway.

You can, but it is longer and slower (very beautiful though). If you are going to the northern most point of Sweden (Treriksröset), you drive on the finnish side of the border at the end.

I'm sure its lovely. But what I meant was that the middle of mainland Norway on those maps seems to be in Sweden .

iansmith --> and to think that the Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area didn't even make the cartoon's list of projections, even though it's the basis for the UN Logo

By the way, I'm still testing this and I only have access to certain combinations of browser/devices.

So, if you go to the site and it's not working well for you, send me an email to let me know what browser/device you were using and what wasn't working so I can look into it.

Thanks!