How Big is Delaware?

Icebergs are measured in Delawares. A Delaware is equivalent to two Luxembourgs.

The colossal iceberg, which recently separated from the Larsen C ice-shelf in Antarctica, has presented the media with a bit of a problem. Ever since the iceberg calved news editors up and down the land have been asking themselves,

'How can we describe something this large?'

Most news organizations eventually settled on describing the iceberg as being 'as big as Delaware'. Of course most consumers of these news organizations immediately replied,

'How big is Delaware?'

I've also heard the iceberg being described as being twice the size of Luxembourg. So Delaware is about two Luxembourgs. Now all we need to know is - how big is two Luxembourgs? How Big is the Iceberg has the answer to the questions of how big are two Luxembourgs, one Delaware or even one large recently calved iceberg.

This Google Map allows you to drag the outline of the iceberg around and compare it to any location on Earth. You can of course drag the iceberg over Delaware of Luxembourg if you want to compare it to those standard iceberg measurement units. However you can also drag the outline of the iceberg to a town or city that you better understand the size of.

This kind of draggable shapes map is very easy to create with the Google Maps API. There is a great example of a Draggable Polygons map in the Google Maps API documentation. Note the comments in the code to 'set geodesic to true' if you want your polygon to automatically resize when its dragged north or south on the map.

Icebergs aren't the only things that you can compare with geographical locations on a map. There is a whole host of websites which allow you to directly compare geographical locations with other geographical locations on a map. You might like The True Size of ..., OverlayMaps, MAPfrappe, My Life Elsewhere, Mapmerizer and If It Were My Home?