Every Day Is Special: river

Showing posts with label river. Show all posts

March 14 – International Day of Action for Rivers

Posted on March 14, 2016

No question about it, people need rivers. The need for a source of fresh water, and the use of running water for transport and energy, make rivers super important to people. And that is why most large cities and many smaller cities and towns are located on rivers.

Not only are most large cities founded on the banks of rivers,
entire empires have grown up around rivers!

Above, the Ancient Egyptian Empire developed along the
Nile River. Below, the Nile and Cairo, Egypt's capital, today.

Four European capitals are located on the Danube River:
Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary; and Belgrade, Serbia.

Okay, people need rivers...

But do rivers need people?

Many rivers in the world have not just been used by people, they've been abused by people!

Some rivers have been dammed up or diverted to irrigation channels or other commercial or private waterways.

Some rivers have been polluted by factories dumping chemicals or hot water directly into them; other rivers have been polluted by run-off of pesticides from fields and lawns.

Dammed, diverted, and polluted rivers need people – because they need us to take action to undo the harm we have done to them!

According to Young People's Trust for the Environment, more than 97% of the Earth's water is salty. Most of the remaining water is frozen in the polar ice caps.

So ALL the fresh liquid water in all the rivers, lakes, underground reservoirs and springs, and even the fresh liquid water in the atmosphere and clouds – all of that crucial fresh liquid water makes up less than 1% of the world's water!

Keeping it clean is pretty important!

The International Rivers website has a map you can use to find Actions for Rivers.

And Create the Good has a useful step-by-step article about how to hold a river clean-up. We've done it – it was very satisfying!

Also on this date:

Pi Day, Pi Day, and more Pi Day

Origami grandmaster Akira Yoshizawa's birthday

International Ask a Question Day

Physicist Albert Einstein's birthday

National Potato Chip Day

Summer Day in Albania

White Day in Japan

Plan ahead:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

June 7 – Anniversary of the End of a Manitoba Voyage

Posted on June 7, 2015

Do you know what the “mouth” of a river is?

It's one end of the river – the end that is “downstream” – the part where the river flows into a lake, reservoir, ocean, or maybe just another river.

That is the opposite end from the “headwaters,” the source of the river, which is often an underground stream or a melting glacier but is sometimes a lake or a marsh.

On this date in 1800, famed explorer David Thompson reached the mouth of the Saskatchewan River, in what is now Manitoba, Canada. The river empties into Lake Winnipeg.

Many Americans don't know much about Canada, especially the central provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. These two provinces are largely prairie, and of course a few lakes.

And when I say “a few lakes,” I mean over 110,000 lakes in Manitoba alone, including the tenth-largest freshwater lake in the entire world, Lake Winnipeg.

I don't know if you noticed that I referred to David Thompson as a “famed” explorer. He is widely known by Canadians, but not so much by citizens of the U.S. Thompson surveyed huge swaths of land and traveled miles of rivers; he filled in gaps of knowledge about almost two million square miles of Canada!

This map shows Thompson's exploratory routes.

Here are some cool things to see in Manitoba:

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has interactive exhibits and a Tower of Hope.

The interior of the Manitoba legislative building features hieroglyphics, free-masonic symbols, and numeric codes – but in a pretty subtle way. A tour guide is helpful to point out such things as a bust of Medusa, the repeated use of the numbers “666” and “13,” and Egyptian sphinxes!

Lake Winnipeg (above)

and Hudson Bay (below)

Check out the beautiful Manitoba lake below. There seems to be a mysterious "hole" in the lake.

Also on this date:

Artist Paul Gauguin's birthday

Boone Day

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks's birthday

Birthday of men's fashion icon Beau Brummell

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

February 24 – A Clogged-Up River is Cleared

Posted on February 24, 2014

Chunks of ice were just floating down the St. Lawrence River, minding their own business, when suddenly they found themselves in a narrowed stretch of the river, where they stuck, caught in a huge traffic jam.

Well, I guess I should call it an ice jam!

Around 250,000 tons of ice were jammed up, blocking the St. Lawrence River.

And the St. Lawrence is really important—that is the way that ships get from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and vice versa. The ice jam had to go!

Someone decided to try using explosives to clear the jam. Thermite (the kind known as a magnesium bomb) is an explosive made of finely divided magnesium and iron oxide, and three 90-pound charges were readied.

Ka-boom went the first charge! When the second charge was fired, “a huge flame fifteen feet in diameter and six feet high was emitted.” Apparently this was startling even to the guys blowing up the thermite; people talked about watching “burning ice.” After the third charge, the whole jam moved out and “passed quietly down the river.”

Do you like fireworks?

Some of the brightest parts of fireworks are created by burning magnesium.

Magnesium is a metallic element that scientists sometimes work with in powder or ribbon form. When people burn magnesium in a lab, for example as a demonstration for students, it is important that the demonstrator wear goggles and that the students not look directly at the burning magnesium.

Check out this video to see how brightly it burns!

Here is a video of a demonstration of burning magnesium inside dry ice.

If you have ever wanted to see thermite destroying a laptop, here it is. In slow motion. (Note that this sort of thermite uses aluminum rather than magnesium.)

Also on this date: