I had a pretty awesome professor in college and he was talking about France and the different regions and even languages that used to be part of it. A student raised their hand and said "But I thought France was a small country" (Mercator projection problems) and he just flatly stated "France is the size of Texas." That quieted the room pretty good.
Why was that their reaction though, do americans think of Texas as being big? I feel like saying "France is as big as one of the 50 US states" shouldn't have worked as well as it did at explaining to a bunch of american kids that it's not a small country lol.
It is, but I'm from Europe so almost every US state seems big to me. Florida is the size of the UK, and you could fit all of Hungary inside Wyoming.
I guess what I'm saying is if you showed Texas and France superimposed on a map to some kids I would expect an european kid to think Texas is big and an american kid to think France is small.
I had a pretty awesome professor in college and he was talking about France and the different regions and even languages that used to be part of it. A student raised their hand and said "But I thought France was a small country" (Mercator projection problems) and he just flatly stated "France is the size of Texas." That quieted the room pretty good.
Why was that their reaction though, do americans think of Texas as being big? I feel like saying "France is as big as one of the 50 US states" shouldn't have worked as well as it did at explaining to a bunch of american kids that it's not a small country lol.
Texas is huge. It takes like twelve hours to drive across Texas.
It is, but I'm from Europe so almost every US state seems big to me. Florida is the size of the UK, and you could fit all of Hungary inside Wyoming.
I guess what I'm saying is if you showed Texas and France superimposed on a map to some kids I would expect an european kid to think Texas is big and an american kid to think France is small.