Hello and welcome to episode two of " Winners and Losers " in which I 'll be looking at the 50 States of America.

Once again the first category will be size.

The largest of the 50 states is Alaska.

Now, looking at a map like this, Alaska doesn't actually look that big.

This is because maps like this don't show Alaska to the same scale as the rest of the states.

In reality, Alaska is much much bigger than that.

If you were to overlay Alaska 's most western point over the San Francisco Bay area, its most eastern point would be around Jacksonville, Florida, on the opposite coast.

Alaska comprises 18 % of the country 's total area and has nearly doubled the length of the coastline as the other 49 States combined.

If Alaska were a country it would be the 20th largest in the world.

And without Alaska, the USA would drop from the 4th to 5th largest country in the world, behind Brazil.

Alaska is larger than the 22 small states combined and is more than double the size of the second largest state, Texas.

In 3rd place is California, less than a quarter the size of Alaska.

The three smallest states are Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.

Comparing the largest and smallest states, Alaska is 430 times the size of Rhode Island.

Of course size is a relative issue.

While Rhode Island may seem tiny compared to Alaska, compared to the three smallest countries in the world, Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, Rhode Island seems pretty huge.

Even compared to larger countries like Malta, Singapore and Dominica, Rhode Island still seems pretty big.

In fact, Rhode Island is larger than 29 independent countries.