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.