Home⇒ 📌Geography ⇒ Interesting facts on the topics “Earth movement and time zones”, “Relief and its formation”, “Climate”
Interesting facts on the topics “Earth movement and time zones”, “Relief and its formation”, “Climate”
If the Earth was always facing the Sun with one side, like the Moon to the Earth, there would not be a change of day and night, summer and winter. There would be two conditional hemispheres – “daylight” and “night”. Life on such a planet would stop. Owing to a sharp change in temperature, the oceans would disappear on the Earth: they would evaporate from the “day” side and freeze from the opposite, where a huge ice gang would form. The Egyptians began to count the time first. They introduced a calendar in which at first there were 360 days. Later, the duration of the year was determined more accurately, and the year began to equal 365 days. In 238 before and. e. Pharaoh Ptolemy III introduces an additional day every 4 years. This is how a leap year appears. In 46 BC. e. Julius Caesar introduces a more accurate calendar, called the Julian calendar. In 1582 Pan Gregory XIII once again changes the calendar. It is the Gregorian calendar that
we use to this day. But it is also not perfect: the months and quarters have different duration, the days of the week do not agree with the numbers. Projects are being developed to improve the calendar, and it is possible that our descendants will look at the modern calendar as some kind of curiosity. The international time reference system was first adopted in the US in 1884. It quickly spread to the world. In many countries, including in Ukraine, summer time is introduced, when the hour hand is moved forward 1 hour. This practice exists in many countries of Europe and allows more efficient use of light day for economy and uniform consumption of electricity during the day. It is known that the highest mountain peak on land is Everest, whose altitude above sea level is 8850 m. But in reality the highest mountain on Earth is the extinct volcano Mauna Kea. located in the Hawaiian Islands. Much of the mountain is under water. How long do mountains live? For many people, mountains are a symbol of eternity. If we compare with the existence of mankind, then so it is. It is estimated that for the destruction of mountains and
the formation of plains in their place, taking into account the strength of rocks, it is necessary from 20 to 200 million years. The concept of “climate” was introduced more than 2200 years ago by the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus. He was referring to the noonday slope of the sun’s rays. Hence, even then the difference in the angle of incidence of the sun’s rays from the equator to the poles was considered the main reason for the change in weather conditions in different latitudes. One of the first written sources, indicating the prediction of weather and climate, is the Bible. It describes how the prophet Ilia publicly predicted the rain during a drought. And the first long-term climate forecast gave, being in Egyptian captivity. Joseph. He predicted seven arid years in a row and offered to store as much grain as possible for this period. The climatic processes have been of interest to mankind for a long time, but only 300-400 years ago the first instruments for measuring the state of the atmosphere were created-a thermometer and a barometer. The most dangerous and destructive natural phenomena of our planet are tropical cyclones. In Asia, they are called typhoons, and in North America – by hurricanes. Due to significant pressure fluctuations, the wind speed inside the hurricane achieves enormous indicators: 90-110 m / s, or 400 km / h. There is a tradition of giving typhoons short female names. For this, even a list of 84 women’s names has been compiled. In order not to offend men, since 1979 typhoons have been given and male names. An important source of information about the climate of ancient times are the fossil remains of representatives of flora and fauna. And old trees can help to learn about changes in climatic conditions of a certain territory over the last 200-300 years. After all, by cutting a tree, analyzing the annual rings, you can determine how the climate changed. Thus, the wider annual rings indicate a favorable weather for the growth of the tree, and the thin ones indicate unfavorable weather. At present, there are about 500 thousand plant species and over 1.9 million animal species on the Earth. Vegetation and fauna have changed significantly in different periods of development of our planet. Man constantly uses many conventional boundaries: the line of the equator, tropics and polar circles, the continental boundaries of the peninsulas, the borders between the oceans. Although these boundaries are conditional, they are of great importance for determining the geographic location of any objects.
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Interesting facts on the topics “Earth movement and time zones”, “Relief and its formation”, “Climate”