Monday, April 30, 2007

Very Spacial Games

After playing a few of the geography games like GeoSpy Geography Game i found myself missing a few of these questions and it made me realize that geographical awareness is not very good. I tried the locate this country in Europe portion of the game and I had some trouble with the countries in south east parts of Europe. What i became concerned with was the fact that if I am having trouble with this and I am a geography major what is the knowledge level of your average person on this topic of locating different counties. This game was a little childish and lame but it actually made me think and i think it could be worth the try to sit down and try to remember where different counties are located. these games even though they where a little childish they where a lot of fun to try and see how many questions you could answer correctly. At this same time while having fun and getting a few questions wrong i was able to learn a little more about the locations of countries in Europe. I think that everyone should take a look at these geo-games and see how much they really know.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Mapping Hazards


Mapping hazards can mean so many different things. For example it could deal with mapping volcanic lava flows, areas of high vulnerability for avalanches, violent weather, or earthquakes. As you can see this map which shows the earthquakes that have happened around the globe in the last hour to week. it represents all magnitudes of earthquakes. There are 228 earthquakes that were mapped and plotted onto this map. notice the locations of the earthquakes. Naturally they are located on major plate intersections. Most of which are located on "the ring of fire," a well known area to having seismic activity. Mapping earthquakes is highly scientific study. By mapping out earthquakes you are able to locate the movement of plates. For example, if one earthquake happens and then another theoretically you can predict where the next one might occur. This is similar to a zipper on a coat. as pressure builds it snaps to release and continues in that pattern in a single direction moving along fault lines. granted this is all theoretical but it does tend to occur in this manner. People who map hazards like these have a lot to offer with their studies because if we can count on an earthquakes occuring in certain predicted spots we may be able to save more lives.