The distance from Jacksonville, Florida to Los Angeles, California is about 3888 km. The earth's circumference is about 40 000 km (source), so the US spans about 10% of that, roughly :)

That's driving distance. And if you're ignoring latitude and focusing on the lower 48 states, why not measure diagonally?

TIL that half of the Canadian west coast is actually Alaska.

Slightly less than your mom

Technically Alaska is the eastern most and western most state, so it spans the entire earth.

How big can we reasonably get this percentage? If we measure from Maine to the furthest tip of the Aleutian isles and take the circumference further north is that significantly larger? What if we go from Puerto Rico to Guam or American Samoa?

Guam <-> Maine is 13Km+

and Australia is 4000km across in a straight line (not driving) and over 5000km driving

You should try Russia if you truly want to impress with geography factoids.

Walk + rowboat, yay or nay?

You need to follow the curve of the Earth in order to make such a comparison. You've drawn a random squiggly line on a Mercator map projection and took the length of that and compared it to the circumference of a sphere. Those two things simply cannot be compared like that.

The fact is still correct, the continental US is around 10% of the circumference. But in the grand scheme of things this isn't really important or relevant for anything? It's just a fun fact really. For example the country of Chile also spans about 10% of the circumference. And so does Australia. Russia approaches 20%.

As the circumference of the planet isn't a measurement a regular person can relate to, or has any meaning for anyone, what does this comparison give us in terms of a new insight?

I always though "TIL" was "This is Lit!", until today, when I learned that was not the case.

Now try that with France

well yeah chile is long but significantly longer than broad. for the US, the length/width ratio is more like 2:1 so it's less extreme.

and also yeah, australia is big, but mostly all desert (i guess 90%) while the US is only 50% desert.

I only know about the French protectorates that play in concacaf -- do they also have some elsewhere? Otherwise it may not be much larger? Doesn't the Netherlands also have some far-flung colonies still?

Yes but France is the empire where the sun doesn't set. From Martinique over Réunion to French Polynesia in the Pacific, it basically spans the entire world.

At least some (maybe all?) of France's extra-continental territories are more like Hawaii than Guam. Their residents are full French citizens with proportional representation more or less equal to a section of European France with the same population.

France isn't the empire that the sun never sets on -- it's a single country that is near always in daylight.

True. It was a dig on the old saying about the British empire.

You do know that on spheres there's more circumference angles than just east to west, right? Any direction also has a circumference on the surface of the Earth.

All walk. Look for ice.

Projection doesn't matter, distance remains consistent even if it appears longer or shorter than it is in reality.

That distance does follow the curve of the Earth. It necessarily must. Driving from Jacksonville to LA does not tunnel 3 miles beneath the surface of it earth.

That's not what I meant. If the line isn't a straight as drawn on a sphere, the distance will be longer than it would be when drawn on that sphere. Especially a line like this that follows roads, a squiggly line, can end up much longer than a straight line would be.

When a straight line is drawn on a mercator projection map, and we then turn that projection back into a sphere, the line would no longer be straight. With the only exception being exactly in the north - south direction, since that is preserved with mercator.

My point wasn't that the line is shorter, like you suggest if the line were to tunnel below the surface. Exactly the opposite, the line would appear longer than it actually is, since it wouldn't be straight if we were to look at that line on a sphere.

It's only really the westernmost. You just gotta take a map that doesn't split at the dateline, which is an arbitrary line. Even better, take a globe and it's strictly west of conusa.

Sure, and that's demonstrated pretty well elsewhere here in Australia.

But that's reasonably straight for what's being measured here and not the full breadth of the US. Going from the most extreme points in Maine to California, gives you a distance of 4600 km. Since we're effectively on a sphere, there's no particular reason that line needs to follow the latitudinal lines.

Jup that's why I mentioned Chili. My point was more that a line that follows a circumference on a sphere, depending on the angle, wouldn't look like a straight line on a mercator projection. But like I said, the basic fact is still right, it's just that squiggly line isn't the best indicator for that. If the line is a fractal it could be infinite length (thinking of coastlines), which isn't very helpful.

That's pretty lit that you learned that today

From my basic searches I think you're underestimating a little. I found 2,800 miles was the width according to most websites (Los Angeles is actually a bit further East than Reno, Nevada), my cocktail napkin math puts the width closer to 4,400 kilometers.

Still, really interesting to be the fourth widest country on earth (behind Russia, Canada, China, and Brazil).

https://info-welt.com/how-wide-is-the-usa-in-miles-or-kilometers/

Because the British screwed us over for a favour from America.

6 people at the table 3 Americans, 2 Canadians and a brit. The Brit voted with the Americans.