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.
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