Category Geography

Eskimos spend much of their time hunting seals. During the spring and summer they pursue the seals in their canoes, or kayaks, harpooning them in the open sea, but all sorts of cunning ruses are also used. The Eskimo disguises himself as a seal and lies motionless for hours waiting for one of the animals to come near him, or he will drag himself along like a seal to where a group of these animals are baesking in the Sun.

The most unusual methods of hunting are used in winter when seals spend most of their time under the ice-covered water of the sea. Every seven or nine minutes they must come to the surface to gulp down a new supply of air and for this purpose the seals open up holes in the ice as breathing places.

A skilful hunter first finds these breathing holes which are hidden under heaps of snow, and then waits motionless for hours until a passing seal decides to come up for air. When it does the Eskimos strikes with his harpoon.

The Eskimo uses every part of the seal: the skin, the fat, the meat and the bones. For example, the seal’s flippers with the bones removed make good water bottles. The Eskimo hangs these water bottles near his chest under his clothes when travelling so that the contents will not freeze hard.

The skin is often used for clothes, especially for the outer shoe or boot because sealskin does not spoil with dampness.

 

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The Aborigines of Australia believe in the existence of a life force they call kuran which is force varies in the different creatures which have it: the Aborigines believe, for example, that it is stronger in a man than in a woman, in an emu than in a wild turkey, that it is the same intensity in plants and weak in more simple forms of life. They believe that the life-force is at its most powerful in the medicine man or witch doctor, the ‘clever fellow’.

The life –force does not cease to exist when an individual dies. In fact they believe that the force shoes itself at its strongest at such times almost as if it were expressing its dislike of being excluded from physical life. The Aborigines do not believe that death is caused by natural causes such as illness, old age and accidents; to them death is always the work of an unfriendly supernatural power.

As soon as a dead person has been buried the whole Aborigine village moves away from the grave so as not to be troubled by the kuran of the deceased. After about three months it is thought that the life force will vacate the old body and be reincarnated in another.

 

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Until July 1853 Japan had been a land closed to all contacts with the west. No ports were open to Western ships, missionaries who tried to convert the people to Christianity were killed and all forms of Western culture were banned. But time did not stand still outside Japan. The early steamships that sailed across the Pacific Ocean needed places where they could replenish their fuel supplies and Japan was the ideal place for this. Despite much pressure from Western countries, however, Japan still remained closed to all their shipping.

The United States government then decided to send a squadron of naval ships under the command of Commodore Matthew c. Perry. Perry was told to persuade the Japanese to sign a treaty opening up some Japanese ports to Western ships. With two frigates and two sailing vessels he entered the fortified harbour of Urage on 8 July 1853. He refused to obey Japanese borders to leave and demanded that a suitable person be sent to receive the documents he had brought. The Japanese finally complied. Perry made a great impression on the Japanese dignitaries by his firm and dignified bearing. He returned with a larger force the following year and on 31 March 18564 the first treaty between the United States and Japan was signed.
By this treaty shipwrecked seamen were promised better treatment and American ships were able to obtain fuel and supplies at two Japanese ports. Japan’s traditional policy of isolation was broken and from that moment it established contact with the west. It was destined to become the leading country in the Far East and one of the world’s great powers. Only some fifty years later it subjected the Russian fleet to a crushing defeat.

 

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For years engineers and scientists have tried to solve the massive problem of removing salt from sea-water to meet the growing demand for fresh water. Several land-based stills have been built in arid regions such as Kuwait, where local oil deposits supply the fuel, but production costs are high.

Scientists have been able to desalinate sea-water by using nuclear power. Basically what happens is that the water is heated until it evaporates. The vapour is the condensed through cooling and distilled to produce fresh water. The only problem is to have a source of considerable heat which is cheap to use. Such heat could come from nuclear reactors.

 

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The ancient people had a very inaccurate idea of the size and shape of the Earth. They represented it in strange ways, imagining it was shaped like a flat disc surrounded by mysterious seas and oceans.

At one time it took a great deal of patient, detailed work to draw the map of a region. Today, cartography, as the art of map drawing is called, is done very rapidly and with great accuracy.

Maps are now drawn by computers which can read photographs of regions taken from the air. A greater number of maps are now produced than ever before, giving more diverse and accurate information.

 

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The sugar-beet was known as a garden vegetable and for cattle fodder before it was valued for its sugar. As early as the 1500s, however, we come across the first accounts of the sweet juice obtained from boiling these plants.

It was not until the 1700s that the sugar-beet industry made its first simple beginnings. The idea came from a German scientist called Marggraf.

In 1747 he obtained 50 grammas of pure sugar by treating 200 grammas of dried root of beet with crude ethyl alcohol. Other scientists took up the experiments. Governments donated land and money for further research to be carried out and the first sugar-beet factory was built in Silesia in 1803.

Eventually, by the 1850s, beet sugar was able to complete with cane sugar. Today about a quarter of the world’s sugar is produced from sugar-beet.

 

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Earlier this month, a glacier broke off at Joshimath in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, causing an avalanche in Raini village in Tapovan area. The avalanche (a rapid snowslide) was soon followed by flash floods due to a massive rise in water levels in the Dhauliganga river, which buried houses and people along its banks. The devastating flood damaged two hydropower projects, bridges, trapped workers in underground tunnels and killed at least 36 people (at the time of going to press).

A team of scientists at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology investigating the incident suggested that the collapse of a hanging glacier triggered the deluge. This hanging glacier was adjacent to Raunthi glacier, which originates from a remote and inaccessible peak called Mrigudhani (6.063m above sea level). The glacier was hanging on a slope, held up by a mass of rock.

Scientists say that this portion could have weakened over a period of time due to freezing and melting and would have broken off hurtling down the steep mountain slope and falling into a narrow stream. As the water level increased in the stream, it burst. The rushing water breached the dam below and caused massive floods downstream, they explained. But what is a hanging glacier? Let’s find out

What are glaciers?

Glaciers are slow-moving ice masses formed over many years of accumulation of snow – the snow that escaped melting and sublimation over the years. Glaciers flow due to stress from their own weight. They erode rocks on their way and form crevasses.

Glaciers store water in the form of ice during the colder seasons and release it during warmer seasons by way of melting. This serves as a water source for humans, animals and vegetation. There are some 10,000 glaciers in the Himalayas, and Uttarakhand alone has up to 1,495 glaciers.

What are hanging glaciers?

Not all glaciers reach the ocean or a valley floor. Some terminate halfway to the main glacier surface, most often at a diff. The sudden avalanches caused by hanging glaciers often put the area beneath them at risk.

Scientists attributed climate change to the weakening of the hanging glacier that caused the flood in Uttarakhand Rapid temperature changes lead to freezing and thawing of ice, and thereby glacial fractures over time. When temperatures rise, glaciers lose ice faster than they accumulate. This ice melt can lead to the retreat of glaciers and affect the entire ecosystem. Many glaciers around the world are receding due to the warming climate.

 

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When we mention the word “river”, our minds first visualise a flowing water body. River water too, however, freezes, and it is, in fact, a common occurrence more than half (56% of all large rivers) of Earth’s rivers freeze over every year.

While the process of freezing is straightforward in calm waters such as those in lakes or even an ice cube tray, the turbulence in moving water bodies such as rivers and even streams, makes it different and difficult as the water molecules try to crystallise. The freezing of river waters occurs in a number of ways and even give rise to distinct formations.

Anchor ice

Some sections of the river freeze from the bottom up. This type of ice, known as anchor ice, forms on the rocks underwater, even if the surface hasn’t frozen. While a lot isn’t known about how anchor ice forms, grows or even detaches, it is well established that it grows rapidly once it has started. As a result, the appearance and flow of a river can change even overnight!

Pancakes and circles

Ice pancakes and ice circles are distinct surface formations that appear when river water freezes. What sets them apart is the process in which they are formed.

Pancake ice is formed in three phases. At first, frazil ice, which consists of small, needle-like structures, begins to form in the supercooled water. Frazil ice can get packed together by wave action, and the resulting floating mass is known as slush ice. The third and final phase sees the formation of pancake ice, which consists of frazil and slush ice along with a raised rim.

Ice circles, meanwhile, form in slow-moving rivers and look like a giant circle of ice slowly rotating on water. A change in river speed in a section where there is a large amount of ice could lead the ice to rotate until it becomes circular. Alternatively, a huge chunk of ice that breaks away from an ice sheet can become an ice circle in the presence of necessary forces.

Anchor ice, ice pancakes, and ice circles are only a few ways in which the river water freezes. The freezing of river water occurs in complex ways and also leads to more obscure formations at times.

 

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