Why Does Greenland Look So Big on the Map?

"If you did this, you were probably struck by one thing above all else: Greenland is huge. Freaking huge. It looks about twice as big as the U.S., roughly as big as North America and Central America combined. And despite the public waffling between saying we need it for its military or natural resource offerings, this is probably the reason Trump wants it."

"If you've ever wrapped holiday presents, you know that covering round objects with flat paper is no simple task. To wrap a basketball, for example, you'd need to crumple the paper in a horrible mess or cut many pieces and tape them together with unsightly overlaps. Things would be easier if your wrapping paper were made of elastic. Then you could cut out strips or squares and stretch them into appropriately shaped patches to cover the basketball."

President Donald Trump expressed interest in acquiring Greenland, prompting attention to Greenland's apparent vastness. Greenland appears enormous on common world maps, looking roughly twice the size of the U.S. or as large as North and Central America combined. The apparent enormity likely motivates geopolitical interest more than stated military or resource reasons. Flat rectangular maps of a spherical Earth necessarily distort shapes and sizes. Wrapping a spherical object with flat paper illustrates the problem: covering a basketball requires crumpling or cutting and stretching pieces, which distorts any printed pattern. It is impossible to draw a flat, rectangular map of the spherical Earth without distortions.

Read at Slate Magazine