Wednesday, July 1, 2009

How big is it? (à la Sesame Street)




KOOJESSE INLET IN FRONT OF IQALUIT, THE DAY BEFORE CANADA DAY. (HAPPY CANADA DAY TO ALL)

You know how you're sitting around over breakfast and you start discussing which is bigger, Baffin Island or Great Britain? So then you go google it, and the answer surprises you, so you go on to google other various sizes, and it's all fun? You know what I mean?

Well,funny you should mention it, because that's what happened to us this morning, and here are the results, in descending order of square kilometres, and rounded off:

Greenland (no surprise here): 2.166 million

Nunavut: 1.9 million

Ontario: 1.076 million

Alberta: 661,000

Baffin Island: 507,000 (a mere quarter of Nunavut)

Norway: 307,000

Great Britain: 209,000

Cuba: 111,000

Newfoundland (not Labrador): 108,000

Iceland: 103,000

New Brunswick: 71,000

Lake Superior: 82,000
(largest lake in the world by area; by volume could hold water of all the rest of the great lakes plus three more Lake Eries)

Netherlands: 41,530
(27 per cent of land and 60 per cent of population are below sea level)

Lake Baikal: 31,772
(but because of its depth, holds more water than Lake Superior, making it the largest lake in the world by volume--but who's counting?)

Wales: 20,780
(and here's a website that will tell you the size of anything as related to Wales: http://www.simonkelk.co.uk/sizeofwales.html)

Lake Ontario: 19,500
(smallest of great lakes by area, 14th in the world)

Algonquin Park: 7,700

Island of Crete: 8,340

Manitoulin Island: 2,800
(reputedly the largest freshwater island in the world)