The Debunker: Ken Jennings vs. Map Myths, Part 3
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Every Tuesday, we ask Jeopardy! know-it-all Ken Jennings to blow our minds by debunking a cherished myth that “everybody knows” — even though it’s dead wrong. Since Ken’s new book Maphead, about geography nerds, hits shelves today, September 20, we pulled him away from the gazetteer long enough for him to demolish four incredibly wrong “facts” about geography.
Map Myth #3: The Panama Canal Runs from the Atlantic in the East to the Pacific in the West.
That’s just common sense. The Atlantic Ocean is east of the Americas; the Pacific is west. If you’re using the Panama Canal as an oceanic shortcut to the Pacific, you must be heading west, right?
But look at any map of Central America: the Panama Canal actually runs more or less from north to south, not east-to-west. And the Atlantic end of the canal is actually a teensy bit to the west of the Pacific end, so ships traveling from the Caribbean into the Pacific sail southeast through the length of the canal! Did I just blow your mind?
If this kind of geographic bar bet always trips you up, don’t feel bad: it’s your brain’s fault. Over the millennia, humans have evolved specific neurons to judge horizontal and vertical relationships, but we still struggle with diagonals. So that’s why it surprises us to read that Reno is actually further west than Los Angeles, or that the first foreign country you hit while traveling due south from Detroit is…Canada. (Both true! Look at a map!) Our brains want these places to be tidily aligned either north-south, or east-west. The fact that their real relationships aren’t so rectilinear befuddles us.
This is also why that girl in the old TV commercial can defeat her brother so easily at Connect Four by winning…diagonally! Pretty sneaky, sis.
Quick Quiz: What leading U.S. politician was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, leading to constitutional questions about his eligibility for the presidency?
Ken Jennings is the author of Brainiac, Ken Jennings’s Trivia Almanac, and the forthcoming Maphead. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.
Photo by Flickr member Comrogues, used under a Creative Commons License.
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