--- title: Projections: why Greenland looks huge — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Projections: why Greenland looks huge», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Try pressing a piece of orange peel flat: it tears or stretches, and the same happens to the Earth's round skin on any flat map. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Projections: why Greenland looks huge # Projections: why Greenland looks huge Lesson 3 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/0/) — Try pressing a piece of orange peel flat: it tears or stretches, and the same happens to the Earth's round skin on any flat map. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/1/) — A projection is a chosen way of flattening, and each one gives something up: true shapes, true sizes, true distances or true directions. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/2/) — Mercator's map of 1569 keeps compass directions right, which sailors loved, but it stretches land more and more towards the poles, so Greenland looks as big as Africa. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/3/) — The EU5 map is flat too, so Scandinavia, Muscovy and the far north look bigger than they really are next to Africa or India; use a globe when you want true sizes. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/4/) — No projection is wrong and none is perfect; the clever question is always what this map was made for. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/5/) — It is impossible to flatten the surface of a sphere onto paper without stretching, squashing or tearing it, so every flat map distorts something. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/6/) — Gerardus Mercator published his famous world map in 1569, and on it a straight line is a line of constant compass bearing. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/7/) — On a Mercator map Greenland looks about as large as Africa, but Africa is really about 14 times larger. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/8/) — At 60 degrees north a Mercator map stretches land about twice in each direction, so areas look about four times too big. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/9/) — A Mercator map cannot show the North or South Pole at all, because the stretching would grow without limit there. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/10/) — Equal-area projections such as the Gall-Peters or Mollweide maps show every country at its true size compared with others, but they bend shapes. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/12/) — Online maps such as Google Maps use a version called Web Mercator, which keeps the shapes of small areas such as streets right when you zoom in, but makes Greenland look enormous when you zoom out. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/13/) — The shortest route between two places on a globe is part of a great circle, a circle that goes all the way round the globe's widest part, like the equator does, so a flight from London to Los Angeles passes over Greenland and northern Canada. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/14/) — Russia covers about 17 million square kilometres, but Africa covers about 30 million, so Africa is almost twice as big, though Mercator makes Russia look larger. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/15/) — There is no single correct way to centre a world map, and many maps made in East Asia or Australia put the Pacific Ocean in the middle, while some Australian maps put south at the top. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/3-projections-why-greenland-looks-huge/16/) — Like most game maps, the EU5 map leaves out most of the polar regions, and its flat world makes northern lands look larger than on a globe. - ← previous: [Directions, latitude and longitude](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/2-directions-latitude-and-longitude/) - next →: [Time zones and the date line](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/4-time-zones-and-the-date-line/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)