How many States in America have a rectangular type of shape?

Answer 1

Wyoming and Colorado are 2 United States shaped most like a rectangle without border deviations. There are other states that are rectangular ln shape when observing a multicolored map at a glance. North and South Dakota, Kansas, and Pennsylvania are 4 other states resembling rectangular shapes with more moderate deviations along their borders. To try and extend additional states that could possibly draw parallels to that of a 'rectangle' in 'shape' are Nebraska and Utah with their corners cut out with New Mexico's corner added. Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Oregon, Montana and Tennessee are 'rectangular' distortions that look like they were taken out of an old pair of jeans that went through the wash. This helps when trying to picture 'rectangular like' states in your head when trying to remember all 50 of them.

Addendum: Since Colorado and Wyoming are each 7 degrees of longitude from east to west and 4 degrees of latitude from north to south they appear as perfect rectangles in a Mercator projection map. Mercator projection maps show lines of longitude (the vertical lines on a map) as if they were parallel, but they are not. Longitude lines on a sphere converge (get closer) as you move from the equator to the poles. Because of this, Colorado's northern border is actually about 21 miles shorter than its southern border...which means the shape is not really a perfect rectangle. So, you might think that the shape of Colorado is a trapezoid...but its not. When you look at an Equal Area projection map of Colorado you can see that the northern and southern borders are curved...they are not straight lines. They are actually segments of large circles of latitude with diameters of about 6000 miles.

The shape of Colorado is therefore referred to as a Latitude Longitude Quadrangle. This is a three dimensional shape which is a portion of the surface of a sphere. Even this definition is slightly flawed because the earth is not a perfect sphere, but is "bulged" somewhat around the equator. Then you have the additional complication of human error in terms of placing border monuments which have now been accepted as official borders, creating small "kinks" in what would otherwise be perfectly straight lines or curves.