Wendy Cropf, age 10, of Lititz, Pennsylvania, for her question:

Why isn't Greenland a continent?

The geographers of long ago decided that a piece of land had to be very big to qualify as a continent. They did not say exactly how big, but Greenland did not qualify. This seems odd because on a flat map of the world, Greenland looks as big as Australia. Both are islands, but Australia is a continent and Greenland is not. Actually Australia is about three and a half time bigger than Greenland.

A globe gives a truer picture because the world is actually a round ball. A flat map shows the longitudes as straight parallel lines. A globe shows that they are widest apart at the equator and taper together to meet at the poles. Maps are outlined to fit the latitudes and longitudes. But when these lines are stretched out of their true shapes, they make lands near the poles look bigger than they really are. Greenland is in the far north and a flat map stretches its size. On a globe, you see that it is only about three times as big as Texas. It does not qualify as a continent, but Greenland really is the world's biggest island.