Questions and Answers on a Geographic Theme - Part Three - Questions 11 to 15

What question would you ask a Geography teacher if you were back at school?

11) What was the Biggest Island before Australia was discovered?

Ahh, another good question, what do you mean by discovered and discovered by whom as well as how do you define "island"? Discover can be defined as finding something unexpectedly or find during a search. So did Captain James Cook discover Australia onthe 22nd of August 1770, well he discovered the south coast and claimed it as New South Wales. But did he know it was an island when he first discovered it or when the crew member up in the crow's nest shouted "Land ahoy!".I presume we have to a person to discover an island and then when did the Aborigines discover Australia - a cumulative population of 1.6 billion has been estimated to have lived in Australia 70,000 years before the English colonisation. 

But how do we define an island - the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines an island as "any area of land smaller than a continent and entirely surrounded by water." (Source:http://www.britannica.com/science/island). So how do you define a continent otherwise we could have added current day Antarctica, the combined North and South American continents or what about Gondwanaland or even the Indian sub continent as it travelled from Africa to the Eurasian plate with its cargo of evolving rhinoceri and Asiatic lions. The Britannia site defines a continent as "one of the larger continuous masses of land" and it includes Australia as a continent, not an island.Greenland is defined as an island and is one-fourth the size of Australia and no smaller kangaroos. But to answer your question, I guess the Vikings found or discovered Greenland (as an island) and that was the biggest island before Australia (as a continent) was discovered as a coastline in 1770. Hope that helps, when are you going out in your boat?

12) Where did I leave my leather hat?

First of all we need to ascertain if this hat has been lost in the past or in the future, if it is the latter then we need to think where the leather, presumably a cow (unless you are going exotic with some form of antelope, crocodile or ostrich then look to the savannah and rivers of equatorial and southern Africa), is produced. Argentina was estimated to have produced 81.3 million pieces of bovine hide and leather (source). But if the leather has been constructed and bought lost, it is best to visualise the last time you wore it and replay that day in your mind's eye, best to do it at night just before falling asleep as this will help the unconscious mind to work on it when you are asleep. It is a bit like getting your computer to work on a background programme whilst destroying nine shades of pigs using angry birds as a form of flighted ammunition.

13) What cool careers can geographers do?

What careers don't use geographical skills - navigation to get to work to navigation within a game's artificial landscape and remember to add realistic cloud forms and tidal patterns so that the player is fully immersed. What about using the social harmonies you learnt in the sitting arrangements of a classroom and put that forward as a way of reducing stress in planning a sustainable community. What about copying the architectural patterns of a communal courtyard surrounded by houses so that each neighbour has to say hello to their neighbours after the night before - Zanzibar, Venice and even the hidden gardens around a square in London have these forms. 

What about using your lack of Brazilian Portuguese but your working knowledge of limestone cave features to explain the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. What about an alphabetical list of jobs that doesn't even cover 1% of the jobs that use geographical skills - 

Architect, 

Banker, 

Chemist, 

Dentist, 

Egyptologist, 

Farmer, 

Golf Course Designer, 

Hotel Manager, 

Injuries Claim Lawyer, 

Jury Member, 

Karate Instructor, 

Lima Llama rearer, 

Mother, 

Nuclear Power Station button pusher, 

Oscar-winning film director, 

Petrol head, 

The Queen, 

Romulian Cos Player, 

Scientist, 

Transport Hub coordinator for a logistics firm, 

Uniform designer, 

Venusian atmosphere data analyst, 

A weary World Wide Web developer, 

A Xylophonist who tours England and Wales in a transit van until he reaches the big time and not forgetting... 

The Zoo keeper who specialises in ant colonies. 

I have only scratched the surface. Others I may have missed include Viking navigator, Urban planner of future mega cities, Chinese cartographer, measurer of Martian mountain heights, artist who makes a map of said xylophonists journey around British Isles, Coastal walk guide writer. Kids get forced down the science route for job prospects, at the expense of 'softer' subjects. Showing kids what they could end up doing as Geographers is important, in addition to all the transferable skills, and 'soft' skills which are coming back into fashion.

14) Who put the Ram in the Ramalamadingdong?

It was the same guy who put the Bop in the Bop-shu-wop-du-wop. 

Well a relatively answer that also reflects the geography of music. George Jones Jr. wrote the song and thus "put the ram in Ramalamadingdong", he wrote it for the group The Edsels in which he also performed. The song was recorded in 1957 and he sadly passed away on the 27th of September 2008. the song is written in the Doo Whop style that was created and adopted by the African-American communities in the major USA cities. So it could be stated that this style of music and more or less the origin of music came from the African continent. The question also gives me the excuse to the play The Muppets version. 

15) Cleavage. Come on. Have you thought this through?

Yes, like most subjects or television programmes (need I mention the Pottery Throw Down or the Great British Bake Off) they are full of double entredres. I presume you are asking about the cleavage that is linked to geomorphology and petrology. 

It helps to describe a rock feature that is the result of deformation from heat, pressure and sometimes metamorphism. Cleavage helps to describe the planar features (ie the plane surfaces) in the many layers of the rock (foliation). This foliation is divided into two types, primary being found in igneous and sedimentary rocks and features whereas secondary is found in metamorphic rocks and features. And cleavage is the secondary foliation is found in fine-grained metamorphic rocks. Whereas the coarser grained rock foliation is known as schistosity (which also sounds a bit rude - can you imagine Finbarr or Roger Melly being a Geography teacher). 

Of course, there are various forms of cleavage (stop it at the back, please) which are continuous, slaty, spaced, crenulation, disjunctive and transposition. Slate, the metamorphic material found on the roof, is characterised by fine foliation along which it breaks to cause a smooth surface - the slaty cleavage - all the better for the rain to sluice off.

Questions and Answers on a Geographic Theme - Part Two - Questions 6 to 10

Continuing this theme of What question would you ask a Geography teacher if you were back at school?

6) Why did I have to learn it I never got to grips with it

Despite learning it and not always getting to grips with it, you use a lot of its concepts all the time and every day. You use your navigational skills to get from A to B, from bed to the bathroom whilst trying to avoid the rogue piece of Lego. The planned seating at an annual ball reflects the concepts of town planning, someone in an office having to make decisions that will upset some and not others. 

One of the concepts of learning, be it cramming the night before or seventeen months before those two hours in a hot stuffy room, is for you to create new neural pathways in your brain. Another concept of learning is to remember from past experiences, yours or somebody else's - watch out for that piece of Lego.

7) When is that thing gonna happen again where the poles flip?

Well. let's break the question down as those lecturers do in those big lecture halls. That thing you ask about is, I presume, geomagnetic reversal. This is where the magnetic poles are reversed. The Earth has had many chrons (I thought these were the players in a group that played music with rocks in it as documented by Terry Pratchett) - these are the time intervals between polarity reversals. The Brunhes - Matauyama reversal happened 780,000 years ago (at about half past two, not really) and may even, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal) have occurred during a human's lifespan. The Japanese geophysicist, Motonori Matauyama, found , in the 1920's, that rocks with reversed magnetic fields dated back from the Pleistocene age (2,588,000 - 117,000 years ago) 

In 1963, Vine and Matthews used the recorded changed polarity of the rocks in the Mid-Atlantic mountains and ridges to explain the sea floor spreading hypothesis of continental drift. The magnetic field of the Earth is created by the dynamic action of molten iron in the planetary core which creates an electrical current and that leads to a magnetic field (remember the four natural forces, wake up at the back). The planetary dynamo simulations that have occurred in a darkened laboratory have shown that reversals occur spontaneously whereas solar dynamo simulation reversals occur every 9 -12 years. The hypothesized triggers for reversals range from extra-terrestrial impacts, the internal subduction of continental plates into the mantle or the creation of core-mantle boundary plumes. 

8) Where did you learn to throw the board rubber with such accuracy Teacher (changed to protect the innocent)?

As with all things, experimentation is needed to overcome the varying parameters such as air temperature, velocity, taking into account the centrifugal force of the planet's movement on its axis. Equally important is to ask the question as to why there was a need for the teacher to throw the board rubber at you (in the past)? 

As Rafiki once taught Simba: [Rafiki hits Simba on the head with his stick]

Adult Simba: Ow! Jeez, what was that for?

Rafiki: It doesn't matter. It's in the past.

[laughs]

Adult Simba: Yeah, but it still hurts.

Rafiki: Oh yes, the past can hurt. But from the way I see it, you can either run from it, or... learn from it.

[swings his stick again at Simba, who ducks out of the way]

Rafiki: Ha. You see? So what are you going to do?

(The characters Rafiki and Simba are taken from The Lion King and are property of The Walt Disney Company) 

9 Which kind of rock would absorb the teacher's saliva!?

This question does need some explaining - I used to spit on some rocks to the difference between permeable and impermeable rock surfaces. So the rocks that would absorb my saliva are most probably sedimentary. Luckily the human saliva has been measured on the pH scale between 6.5 to 7.5 and, therefore, lies between a weak acid, neutral to a weak alkali. So hopefully my saliva won't disintegrate the rock either.

10) Why do we need to know where Ouagadougou is?

To be totally honest, not all Geography teachers know everything about the world around us. So I did have to copy and paste the capital city into a well-known search engine. Geography teachers are often just conduits of knowledge and, hopefully, inspiration. Of course, I had heard of Ouagadougou and no doubt the pensioners of these fair isles would have heard it on the popular BBC TV tea time programme, Pointless. But did you need to know where Ouagadougou, of course, you do - in case someone asks you to go a car conference in Ouagadougou and you can get an airline ticket to Burkina Faso and not Turkmenistan?

Also, onomatopoeic place names have a greater place in our minds what about Ulan Bator and Timbuktu and not forgetting the multi-syllable names of world statesmen, such as Boutros Boutros-Ghali. So why did we need to know where Ouagadougou, sometimes the Geography teacher is honing your skills for memory, so if you can get to the bar and order seventeen drinks for a round (when you are allowed ot drink, of course) and get them all correct, then thank your Geography teacher. Mine is a pint of Best.

Questions and Answers on a Geographic Theme - Part One - Questions 1 to 5

I asked my Facebook Population for some questions around the theme of what they would like to ask their past Geography teachers, here are some of those questions and answers:

"What question would you ask a Geography teacher if you were back at school?"

1) The tweed jacket with leather elbows

I answered "I had a feeling this might be one of the questions, the tweed jacket (with waistcoat and trousers, of course, if you are going for the three piece suit) is a sustainable material using locally produced wool and various types of vegetation are used for the dyeing process. The use of urine to swell the threads has been replaced. It is a warm material as well as thornproof and has been used on several ascents on Mount Everest and to the Poles. It is the go to jacket for the Geography teacher, the leather patches are used to reinforce the elbows where the teacher has put his head in his hands when a pupil mistakes Beirut with Bayreuth. 


2) What Does LSD stand for?

I presume in the geographical sense - LSD = Longshore Drift - the movement of material, mainly sediment but also flotsam and jetsam down the length of a beach, a shore or coastline. This is usually dictated by the prevailing wind or by the minibuses of geography students moving the pebbles secretly at night to confuse geomorphology professors.


3) Why are all the other kids 40 years younger than me?

Aha, a good point Marty, if you had been a time travelling Delorean driving wanna be rock guitarist whose life was documented in the film trilogy - Back To The Future. What we learn from life is that we are always continuing to learn and we are never too old to learn or to be taught.


4) Why do I need to know about precipitation? It rains I get wet!

There are many more types of precipitation than just rain - these are just a few - snow, sleet, freezing rain, and hail (note the Oxford comma). But why do you need to know about it - knowing more about it helps to predict where it might fall, how to harvest it (yes you can harvest precipitation, Namibia does this as do the plants in this country), how to reduce the results of flooding and lag-time based disasters as well as choosing the right materials for a construction that will absorb the excess precipitation. 

Yes, it can make you wet, the right amount can help you survive, not enough or too much can kill or damage you.

5) Why does the moon control the tides? I have never understood this

Supposedly, and it has been hypothesized, that gravity (and three other fundamental forces - these being electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces) were released from the Big Bang Event. Gravity is a natural phenomenon. Things with mass are brought towards one another due to gravity and it is partially responsible for the complexity to life. Each planetary body has its own gravitational field. 

Gravity does cause tidal movement, but the movements of tides are also due to the sun's position, the rotation of the Earth on its own axis, the ocean basin's geomorphology to name but a few and even the site of the tidal movement measurement. But back to the water, its molecules stick together (luckily) and this is known as cohesion (a bit like social cohesion) and it behaves like a mass. 

The earth's rotational movement, on its axis, puts a centrifugal force on the water's mass (or molecules) as it tries to pull the water away from the eath's surface. It creates that moving "mound" of water on the planet's surface. This bulge is greater at the equator and less prominent at the poles. As the moon's gravitational force exerts an effect on the rotational system of the earth, there is no doubt that the Earth's gravity would have an effect on the moon's rotation. This "doubling" force creates a greater centrifugal force on the side of the Earth that is furthest from the moon. (Are we keeping up at the back?) 

There are 2 high tides every 24 hours and thus there are 2 low tides. The first high tide is due to the rotating tandem of the Earth's and Moon's gravitational pull. The second high tide is due to the Moon's direct effect of gravity pulling on that water mass. A spring tide (not always in spring) is when the heavenly bodies (no, not those ones but the Sun, Earth, and Moon) are in a direct line and this creates higher and lower tides than usual. Neap tides (a weaker tidal reach) when the Sun and the Moon are at right angles to the Earth (normally when the Moon is in the first and last quarter phases). More, and accurate, information can be found here.

A brief introduction to Ordnance Survey

The Ordnance Survey, being a non-ministerial governmental department and self financing to the tune of £120 million annually, is the mapping agent for Great Britain. The USGS is the agent for the USA; Geoscience Australia is the Australian Agency Maps produced by the Ordnance Survey and MapRef is the French agent to name a few. The Ordnance Survey was originally established in 1747 after Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson proposed a map of the Scottish Highlands following a rising by the Jacobites in 1745. A further invasion threat to the south coast of England in 1791 prompted a survey by the Board of Ordnance.

In 1935, the Davidson Committee put forward the case for the re-triangulation of Great Britain and led to the construction of 6,575 triangulation or "trig" points. This led to the formation of the National Grid Reference System. In 1995, the last of the maps were digitised and in 2010, a selection of maps was made available to encourage innovation in the mapping world.

The 2007 National Curriculum Guide Key Concept 2.3 - Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment targets - Pupils should be able to: use atlases, globes, maps at a range of scales, photographs, satellite images and other geographical data (Maps at a range of scales - This includes Ordnance Survey maps to a scale of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000, which should be used by pupils throughout key stage 3 to interpret physical and human landscapes).

To introduce your students to these maps and you have access to the Internet, why not use this series of short videos with Simon King:

Choosing a Map

Map Symbols

Grid Lines Explained

Reading Contours and Relief

Orienting Your Map - Compass Skills

Using Your Compass

and finally

Before Setting Off

As these videos are about two minutes in length, they are ideal for creating a break in the lesson and questions can be asked to ensure that the information was taken in. A list of questions and answers will be added to the video descriptors, above, in the updated version.