Friday

Volcanoes

Volcanoes



Volcanoes are any vent in the crust of the Earth or other planet or satellite, from which molten rock, pyroclastic debris, and steam issue. Volcanism is the name given to the processes and phenomena associated with the surgical discharge of such material from volcanoes, geysers, and fumaroles. Volcanism is a profound process resulting from the thermal evolution of planetary bodies. Heat does not easily escape from large bodies by conduction or radiation. Instead, partial melting and buoyant rise of magma are major contributors to the process of heat flux from the Earth’s interior. Volcanoes are the surface manifestation of this thermal process, which has its roots deep inside the earth and which hurls its ashes high into the atmosphere. The term volcano can either mea the vent from which magma erupts to the surface or it can refer to the landform created by the solidified lava and fragmental volcanic debris that accumulate near the vent. Volcanoes affect humankind in many ways. Their destructiveness is awesome, but the risk involved can be reduced by assessing volcanic hazards and forecasting volcanic eruptions. Volcanism provides fertile soils, valuable mineral deposits, and geothermal energy. Over geologic time, volcanoes recycle the Earth’s Hydrosphere and atmosphere, and explosive eruptions can affect climate.

Earthquake

Earthquake





Earthquake means any sudden disturbance within the Earth manifested at the surface by a shaking of the ground. This shaking, which accounts for the destructiveness of an earthquake, is caused by the passage of elastic waves through the Earth’s rocks. These seismic waves are produced when some form of stored energy, such as much havoc as earthquakes. Over the centuries, they have been responsible for damage to property. While earthquakes lave inspired dread and superstitious awe since ancient times, little was understood about them until the emergence of seismology at the beginning of the 20th century. Seismology, which involves the scientific study of all, aspects of earthquakes, has yielded answers to such long-standing questions as why and how earthquakes occur. About 5000 earthquakes large enough to be felt or noticed without the aid of instruments occur annually over the entire Earth. Of these, approximately 100 are of sufficient size to produce substantial damage if their centers are near areas of habitation. Very great earthquakes occur at an average rate of about one per year. Among the great earthquakes of the past are those of  Lisbon in 1755: New Madrid, U.S., in December 1811 and January and February 1812; sun Francesco in 1906; Tokyo- Yokohama in 1923; the coast of Chile in 1960; south-central Alaska in 1964: Tang-Shan, china, in 1976; and Mexico in 1985.  

Floods

Floods



Floods are high-water stage in which water overflows its natural or artificial banks onto normally dry land. The effects of floods on human well-being range from unqualified blessings to catastrophes. The regular seasonal spring floods of the Nile River prior to construction of the Aswan High Dam, for example, were depended upon to provide moisture and soil enrichment for the fertile floodplains of its delta. The uncontrolled floods of the Yangtze River and the Huang Ho in china, however, have repeatedly wrought disaster when these rivers habitually rechart their courses. Uncontrollable floods likely to cause considerable damage commonly result from excessive rainfall over brief periods of time, as, for example of Paris of Warsaw, of Frankfurt, am Main, and of Rome. Potentially disastrous floods may, however, also result from ice jams during the spring rise, as with the Danube River and the Neva River in Russia; from storm tides such as those of 1099 and 1953 that flooded the coasts of England, Belgium, and The Netherlands; and from tsunamis, the mountainous sea waves caused by earthquakes, as in Lisbon and Hawaii and South-East Asia.

Tuesday

The Educative Value of Traveling

The Educative Value of Traveling



“A gentleman should travel abroad, but live at home,” says a renowned scholar. What he has said id meaningful, but it is, perhaps also equally true that those who want to live well and meaningfully at home should travel abroad. In fact, traveling has as equal an educative value as textbooks have. Seeing is learning the real Pragmatic learning. If we go ort visiting people and places at times and see for ourselves what we would otherwise read in books, our learning would become more effective. What is normally written in textbooks? Nothing but the abstraction of the reality of what has happened, id happening, and may happen in future. If this is true, then it is also true that traveling should be a part of our academic education. The universities, colleges, and schools of most developed countries have already made it compulsory to travel of go on education tours. In Russia, for example, theoretical teaching is not at all given to students in the first year of their schooling on some subjects. Such evidences, and various other research work launched by scholars, hold out the fact that traveling has an immense educative value.