Submitted 3 days ago by xkcdbot@lemmy.world [bot] to xkcd@lemmy.world
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/bad_map_projection_zero_declination.png
xkcd #3207: Bad Map Projection: Zero Declination
Title text:
‘The zero line in WMM2025 passes through a lot of population centers; I wonder what year the largest share of the population lived in a zone of less than 5° of declination,’ he thought, derailing all other tasks for the rest of the day.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: xkcd.com/3207/
Is this even a bad map projection? If you’re working with a compass this sounds pretty useful
Yeah, afaik, there’s need for accounting for magnetic North difference from North when navigating even on foot, so it’s stated on the map with small enough scale
Scandinavia, Novaya Zemlya, and Taymyr Peninsula went all kinds of askew.
Trabic@lemmy.today 3 days ago
I don’t think I have ever needed the ExplainXKCD more. I hope it’s a good one.
DarkCloud@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Magnetic north is variable, and curved. It’s not even accross continents and changes over time. So the map is distorted so that up on the 2D plane of the drawing is magnetic north… Meaning all the countries and shapes are distorted so that magnetic north at those locations matches up in the drawing.
They’re drawn so that magnetic north is the top border of the image.
SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz 2 days ago
The most obvious one for me (maybe because I live there…) is that NZ is basically vertical, rather than being on a big angle.
LarsIsCool@lemmy.world 2 days ago
youtu.be/HSRmfNDk87s
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