Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2022 i Faces People, Places, and World Culture for Kids and Children

We live on a planet of extremes. From scorching deserts to frigid arctic regions, humans have explored and studied Earth’s hottest and coldest places. Here are five facts to get you started. 1 Not all deserts are hot. The classification has more o do with precipitation than temperature. Very little rain or snow falls at the North and South Poles. Antarctica is the world’s largest desert. 2 Where is the hottest place on Earth year-round? Located on the northeastern tip of Ethiopia, buried in the heart of the Danakil Desert, lies Dallol. It’s no wonder some call it the “Land of Death”—the average annual temperature is 94.3 °F (34.6 °C), and daytime temperatures can soar to 122°F (50°C). 3 Certain glacier ice in Antarctica is more than a million years…

People live and explore the entire planet. As they travel over mountains, across oceans, through deserts and over glaciers, they experience and record the most extreme weather that our planet can create. People have measured blistering temperatures and bone-chilling temperatures. They’ve recorded blasting winds of more than 220 miles per hour and torrential rains measured in feet per day. They have even experienced horrific tropical storms and tornadoes. One of the most critical duties of meteorologists and climatologists is to record those extremes and determine if such weather is becoming more frequent. Some of the hottest temperatures occur in the world’s deserts. Deserts tend to have many sunny days in a row, which allows intense heat to build up over time. On the other hand, the coldest temperatures have been…

Death Valley doesn’t sound like the best place to take a vacation. It is partly an arid desert with record heat and constant drought. But don’t let the name fool you. There are many cool and interesting places to see and explore in the park, including huge sand dunes, salt flats, and amazingly colored rocks. And not everything is dry desert with no life. Let’s take a tour of some of Death Valley’s liveliest places. Ubehebe Crater Ubehebe Crater is a large hole, 600 feet deep and a half mile across. It looks a little like a giant basket with sloping sides. The crater is known as a Maar volcano, formed when hot magma from beneath the Earth’s surface reached the groundwater. The intense heat turned the water into steam,…

Artists have categorized colors into warm and cool. On the color wheel, yellow, orange, and red are generally considered the warm colors, and green, blue, and purple are cool colors. However, every color has undertones that also make it warm or cool. Believe it or not, you can have a cool yellow and a warm blue. Just ask fashion designers. They’ll tell you that the look of the model is profoundly affected by the undertones of the colors placed next to their skin. Warm and cool colors occur in landscapes, too. Think of one of the hottest places on earth—Death Valley. Dirt comes in more colors than you could ever imagine. The skies are painted with vibrant sunsets cast in gold, yellows, and hot pinks. On the Eastern Antarctic Plateau,…

Equatorial and Subequatorial Zones: Most of the hottest and driest places on Earth are in these zones. The sun’s light hits these regions most directly. Tropical and Subtropical Zones: These regions are hot and humid. Some of these areas receive more than 59 inches of precipitation a year, and the average temperature is more than 64 degrees F. Temperate Zone: Summers are typically warm and humid in this zone. Winters are mild. Polar and Subpolar Zones: Most of the coldest places on Earth are in these zones. The sun’s light and heat hit the North and South Poles least directly.…

Summers are scorching in India. For low-income urban dwellers, living in their shacks with roofs that absorb heat is akin to staying in a hot furnace. But such hot tin roofs may soon become history—thanks to pails of paint. Heat that Hurts Across India, particularly in the vast Northern plains, summers can be extreme. Temperatures outdoors can soar to 124˚ F (51˚ C), high enough to melt the asphalt of the streets. Searingly hot winds, called the loo, blast over towns, cities, and villages, whipping up dust storms. Many people cope with such intense weather conditions by staying indoors. They use a range of gadgets, from cheap fans to costly air conditioners to keep cool. But for millions of urban lower-income households, such an escape is only a dream. These…

In the beginning, the Araucanian god Negueneche (noo-eh-NEH-cheh) created many trees, among them araucaria (ahr-ah-KAHR-yah). This tall South American pine has stretched-out, whorled branches and stiff leaves that look like scales. Large cones full of edible seeds hang high in the trees every summer. Ngueneche covered the southern Andes with these magnificent evergreens. But the people considered the araucaria sacred, so they didn’t pick up the piñon nuts that it bore every year. They gathered under the sacred tree only to pray and to offer meat, blood, and smoke. They also confessed their wrongdoings to the tree and hung gifts from its branches to honor it. One year, the winter was longer than it had ever been. Snowstorms veiled the mountains and valleys, leaving no trace of well-trodden paths. Swirling…

Tardigrades are nearly indestructible. Bake them, boil them, deep-freeze them, dehydrate them, crush them, even send them to space in a rocket. No matter what brutal forces they face, these tiny eight-legged aquatic animals are survivors. Mini, but Mighty What are tardigrades? They are chubby microscopic animals that look like a cross between a caterpillar and a badger. Their Latin name means “slow stepper” because they move with a clumsy walk, like they’re made of jelly. Also called water bears or moss piglets, they have claws like bears and daggerlike teeth that tear into moss and algae and suck out the juices. Most tardigrades are smaller than a dot made with a pencil, so you need a microscope to truly enjoy them. Because they are aquatic, tardigrades need to be…

Have you ever wanted to predict the future? Climate scientists start by looking at the past. They uncover historical information and compare it to current data to help predict what the climate will be like in the future. Glaciers offer a valuable record of past climates. Climate versus Weather What’s the difference between climate and weather? Weather and climate both have to do with the temperature outside, but in different ways. Climate refers to the long-term pattern of weather in a specific location. This includes the average amounts of rain and snow, the temperature, wind levels, and the number of storms over a period of 30 years or more. The climate of your hometown is the typical weather you see year after year. Is there always lots of snow every…

One of the earth’s most amazing natural wonders—Lake Baikal—lies in southeastern Siberia. Frozen for six months of the year, with hurricane-strength winds whipping across it the other half, Lake Baikal is both beautiful and severe. Its name is derived from the Turkish word bai-kul, meaning “rich lake.” And Lake Baikal is truly rich in wonders. It’s the world’s oldest lake—an astounding 25 million years old. People have lived on its shores since the Stone Age. Shaped like a banana, it’s the deepest lake in the world, plunging well over a mile down. Roughly the size of Belgium, it’s 400 miles long and nearly 50 miles wide. It contains 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water. If it was to be emptied and all the world’s rivers diverted to fill the…

Mount Washington: The Worst Weather in America? New Hampshire’s Mount Washington is known worldwide for its erratic weather patterns. At 6,288.2 feet, it is the tallest peak in the northeastern United States.…