A map shared to social media in mid-October 2024 precisely in contrast the dimensions of Texas to Europe.
The map shared on-line reasonably exaggerated the dimensions of Texas; nonetheless it was roughly an correct illustration of the state’s vastness.
A photo shared to Fb on Oct. 11, 2024, claimed to indicate an overview of the state of Texas laid over a map of Europe, highlighting the Lone Star State’s immense dimension because it coated giant parts of 5 Western European nations.
The put up, which had amassed greater than 17,000 reactions as of this writing, was captioned: “After Seeing These 15 Maps You will By no means Look At The World The Similar.”
Hayley Drennon, senior analysis assistant at Columbia College’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, stated through e mail that sure, “Texas actually is THAT massive.”
Nonetheless, the state’s borders had been reasonably exaggerated within the Fb put up, which made its illustration solely largely true. Nonetheless, the true vastness of Texas, as outlined beneath, will not be far off.
To copy the map, Drennon downloaded the Texas State Boundary shapefile, a location and geographic dataset, from the Texas Division of Transportation (TDT). She then reprojected the state utilizing the Environmental Methods Analysis Institute’s (ESRI) ArcPro Software, a geographic info system that maintains knowledge sources to create maps. These open-source databases are offered to researchers, establishments, and governments for mapping-specific wants.
Drennon created the same map overlay beneath.
(Courtesy of Hayley Drennon / TDT / ESRI)
Although Drennon’s creation is just like the one within the Fb put up, a side-by-side comparability (pictured beneath) reveals Texas’ boundaries are reasonably exaggerated within the Fb put up.
For instance, the Fb model reveals El Paso County — within the western portion of the Lone Star State — stretching near the Spain-France border, whereas in Drennon’s creation El Paso County lies farther north. Likewise, the southernmost ideas of Pharr County practically attain Rome, Italy, within the Fb put up, whereas in Drennon’s it’s also farther north.
(Snopes compilation Fb/@myamericatravel, Drennon)
Drennon famous that the dimensions distinction could also be a matter of projection, or how a two-dimensional map is translated onto a three-dimensional globe. She likened this to wrapping a round object – individuals might have totally different strategies for wrapping and, relying on their method, the wrap of the paper may look or drape in another way.
“Relying on what sort of projection an individual makes use of, their form map may be barely totally different,” she stated. Drennon added that the map on the left of the above compilation can be barely totally different in form and makes use of extra element than the model she used, which she created from official knowledge printed by the TDT.
The Fb put up’s map seemed to be created utilizing a web site referred to as The True Dimension. Its “About” web page stated:
It’s arduous to signify our spherical world on flat piece of paper. Cartographers use one thing referred to as a “projection” to morph the globe into 2D map. The most well-liked of those is the Mercator projection.
Each map projection introduces distortion, and every has its personal set of issues. Some of the frequent criticisms of the Mercator map is that it exaggerates the dimensions of nations nearer the poles (US, Russia, Europe), whereas downplaying the dimensions of these close to the equator (the African Continent). On the Mercator projection Greenland seems to be roughly the identical dimension as Africa. In actuality, Greenland is 0.8 million sq. miles and Africa is 11.6 million sq. miles, practically 14 and a half instances bigger.
This app was created by James Talmage and Damon Maneice. It was impressed by an episode of The West Wing and an infographic by Kai Krause entitled “The True Dimension of Africa”. We hope academics will use it to indicate their college students simply how massive the world really is.
The Lone Star State has a land space of 261,193.9 sq. miles and a water space of seven,330.9 sq. miles, based on the U.S. Census Bureau. Mixed, that is a 268,524.8 sq. mile space inside Texas state borders.
