The map is imperfect for several reasons: See the table below for lots more information on the comic, but here are some further details. The Mercator projection is infamous for distorting Greenland in this way, to the point that it appears to be larger than Africa despite being nowhere near the same size. Other map projections distort countries this way as well, but based on their actual physical location as opposed to their position on imaginary time zones. For instance Finland (also mentioned in the title text) and the Baltic countries, who look huge because their western and eastern neighbors do not use the UTC+2 Eastern Europe time, and thus have to fill out the distance between the countries that are pushed to the zones on their east/west borders.
#Map time zones full
Conversely, countries that use multiple time zones without filling them out are stretched out - for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mongolia, as pointed out in the title text - as are slim countries that do not fill out the full width of their time zones but where their neighbors use different timezones so they have to fill the entire width of their time zone. The effect of this map is to "punish" large countries with a single time zone - for instance, China, which uses UTC+8 across the whole country - and countries that share large time zones - for instance, almost all of Europe is packed into the Central European UTC+1 zone - by shrinking these down. See also this map with a time zone map overlayed the comic. This results in bizarre distortions such as the large, gum-like strands of Greenland (these are the towns of Danmarkshavn (UTC) and Ittoqqortoormiit (UTC-1), which use different time zones to the rest of the island) and three enormous gulfs in Russia (some time zones in Russia are only used in southern areas, leaving two-hour differences between some adjacent areas on the country's northern border). Since Randall knows he cannot fix the boundaries of the time zones, he instead "fixes" the world by making a map appear to match up with the time zone system, as shown in this map, also posted in the trivia. However, this is not the case in practice, as the defined time zones tend to have very jagged boundaries, and furthermore some countries use a completely different time than the zones they are in, at least for some parts (see China). Time zones are based on the way the Sun shines on the Earth, so these time zones, which are based on the sun's position in the sky, would best be divided by roughly longitudinal (North-to-South Pole) lines. Local maps of smaller areas can be quite accurate, but the idea of both these map projection comics is to map the entire globe on a flat surface. None of them are really good as any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality, and a map projection that is useful for one aspect (like navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) will not be so for all the others. Randall previously explored 12 different projections in 977: Map Projections, and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes very disputed.
#Map time zones series
Since the liquid resize was purely aesthetic, whereas this one at least conveys some meaningful information it makes sense that this projection is ranked higher.Ĭonceptually, the series is a comment on the fact that there is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. The first "Liquid Resize" was #107, while this comic features #79. It seems that Randall, being Randall, runs with the idea as he has made yet another map projection that is not only inaccurate, but utterly unusable, though less so than the previous one.
This comic shows a map projection in which countries are placed according to the time zones that they fall under. It was followed almost three years later with 2256: Bad Map Projection: South America (#358). The series began a month earlier with 1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize (#107). It was first with this comic that it became a series. This is the second comic in the series of Bad Map Projections and presents Bad map projection #79: Time Zones. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. Some of the info already given in the explanation could be moved to the table. (Especially those from title text needs explanation like that). But needs to be filled out for each country with explanation of its time zone and why it looks as it does on the map.
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Table now has all relevant countries and is sortable.
Title text: This is probably the first projection in cartographic history that can be criticized for its disproportionate focus on Finland, Mongolia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Ī double sized version of this image can be found by clicking the image at the comic on.
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