Topic: Why is fresh water scarce?

!) List the main reasons for water scarcity.
The main reasons are hot deserts and low rainfall.
2) What is a drought? What type of hardships do you think that a drought could cause if you were living in a village in a poor country such as Ethiopia.
A drought is a period below average precipitation and if I was living in Ethiopia, water would barely found because it has many droughts and the Ethiopians don't have enough money to buy water. 
3) How does land degradation affect the supply of fresh water? It doesn't infiltrate making the water run off instead.
4. a) What is El Nino? El Nino is a climate which stands for hot climate.
    b) Why does El Nino often cause drought in Australia. Because Australia is near the equator.
5) Observe the map showing the global effects of El Nino in 1982-83.
a) What effects does El Nino have on the availability of fresh water?
b) Name the countries and describe the problems that arose from decreased rainfall caused by El Nino.

Water Treatment Plant

In this field trip we got to learn how the water gets clean in the city. The trip to the water treatment plant took for an hour and 10 minutes. I was often asleep in the bus. And finally, we were there, standing in front of a building, but there was more behind it.

Speaking of what's behind it, they are machines or stations which has a job on cleaning water. The first one is called the course and fine filter. They both take out the garbage from a certain river. For what purpose? To make the water clean and to prevent germs from the garbage spread into the freshwater. Sometimes or often, when the machines stop working and, the garbage and dirt keeps on flowing, there's this tool called the power pump (the first thought in my mind that it was kind of a super machine or something) which stops the flowing and prevents them from spreading on the clean water.

The second station is when the water gets added with alum. But it makes you wonder, what is it and what does it do (and trust me, it's not aluminum)? Well, it's kind of hard to explain what alum is but it's some kind of solid particles which makes the dirt stick together. That blob of dirt is called floc.

The third station is like the sequel to the second because it's when the floc slowly settles at the bottom. This station is in a reservoir. The water is more than 6 feet deep and, it looks clean but it's still not potable because there are more processes to do before it's clean. Speaking of more processes, the next one is the fourth station.

The fourth station is when the water is still in the reservoir but this time, there's sand in it. This type of sand is not found in the beach, but it's a special one. It's used to clean the water from the remaining germs (or coli) found. After that, disinfectant was added.

The last but not least station is when the water is transferred to the lab, to test if it's clean or not. The lab also compares the dirty river water to the processed water. The processed water cannot be drinkable but it's good for showers or any other which is not related to drinking.

After that, we went to the control room. Obviously, the control room is in charge of controlling the whole water treatment plant. There were many handles and buttons, and nobody dared to touch a single one to what might happen. Finally, we rested and then, we watched an animated movie which reflects on the water process. It was really hilarious and funny, especially Bondol the eagle. After the movie ( like as usual), we went back to JIS.

Geoactive, p. 227, #1-6

1.What percentage of the world`s supply of fresh water? The percentage of the world's supply of fresh water is 2.5%
2.Where is the worlds supply of fresh water found? 2% is found in ice on land, 0.49% is found in soil and groundwater and 0.01% is found in lakes and rivers.
3.Even though the supply of fresh water is abundant it is still a problem. Why?
It's because most of the water found is mostly salt water and there's few freshwater in the world.
4.Observe the map of world`s average annual precipitation(opposite)
(a)Describe the changes in rainfall that occurs as you move from the southern to the northern tip of Africa. In the southern tip of Africa, there's like 500-1000mm of the average annual rainfall, but in the northern tip, the annual rainfall is under 250mm which means from south to north, the rainfall decreases.
(b)Describe the changes in rainfall that occurs as you move from the western to the eastern tip of Australia
along the Tropic of Capricorn. In the West part of Australia, the average annual rainfall is lower than 250, compared to the East part, the rainfall is more than 2000. So from West to East, the rainfall increases.
5.Observe the map above of water availability per person
(a)Which parts of the world appear to have a large amount of water available per person? Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Russia, almost most of the parts of Australia, Central Africa, Canada, the upper part of South America and Costa Rica.
(b)Which parts of the world appear to have a small amount of water available per person? Almost most parts of China, Mongolia,  The Middle East, The north west part of Africa, the southern part of Australia, Japan, and most parts of Europe.
6.Observe the diagram of water use.
(a)what are the main uses of water? The main uses of water is with the reservoir.
(b)Which uses have increased the most over the last century? The reservoir losses from evaporation and seepage  increased most over the last century.

Bintaro Lama

This was the 3rd time I'm gonna go to a kampung. At first, I thought we're just gonna visit Bintaro Lama but we're also gonna make a slide show or a video about the 3 stations we're assigned to.
Nicholas, Nathan and I were at stations 1, 3 and 5. Station 1 introduces the sand filter, a thing which traps bacteria in the groundwater. How? Let's say that the groundwater gets poured in the sand filter and it passes through the sand, gravel and small rocks. Why does the sand filter need those solids? It's because they trap the bacteria while the ground water passes through it.
Station 3 shows another way to clean water through SODIS which I'm not sure of what it stands for but it's kind of like Solar Disinfection. Why is it called that way? It's because this process includes solar heating. First, you clean the water bottle( the water bottle should have no texture and should be transparent so when it dries in the sun, the heat will burn the germs in the bottled water) inside and outside, and then fill it with water( which came from the sand filter) . When the water goes on the top, make it overflow so that the oxygen feed on the germs. Then, you put it on a roof of a house so that the sun can burn the remaining germs. The bottle stays there for 6 hours. Station 5 shows the water quality test and the tubility test. First, they will show you a really long cylinder which is like a graduated cylinder and they will fill it with water. This is called the Turbidity Test. This test shows how clear is the water. How can you tell? On the bottom of the tube, there's an X sign so if you look through the tube and water, you can tell if you can see the X sign clearly. Another tool of measuring water's quality is called the PH4, a tool which measures acidity. P stands for percent and H stands for Hydrogen, and I don't really know what 4 stands for. On the PH scale, from numbers 0 to 14, water is simply the baseline which is in 7 and it also means that it's neither acidic or basic. Acidic things can be lemon or hydrochloric acid. Basic things can be soap or ammonia. And after we visited all 3 of the stations, we sang with the kampung kids a washing hands song, and then we washed our hands. After all of the jingle, we went on the buses and we went back to JIS.

Evaporation, Condensation, Precipitation, and Infiltration

Evaporation: The time when water turns into gas and becomes water vapour. Almost all of the water contained in the air. Another way to get water is called transpiration, when there is water loss in plants. But if there's combined water loss in the atmosphere from evaporation and transpiration, it's called Evapotranspiration.













Condensation: This is the opposite of evaporation because water vapour changes from gas to tiny droplets of water that is very hard to see. Those tiny droplets are so hard to see, air can carry it. We recognize them as clouds or fog.











Precipitation: After the process of condensation, while the air are carrying the tiny drops of water, they start to increase in size until the air can't carry them so instead, they drop them, causing precipitation. Although, rain isn't the only type of precipitation but snow, hail and sleet too.










Infiltration: During precipitation, some of the water which falls on Earth may be stored as ice, snow and icebergs but also, the water can be stored underground. How? It's through a process called infiltration. How does it work? The raindrops falls onto the earth, passes through the soil and makes it underground. Although they made it, they usually make its way to lakes or rivers. Then why are there wells and springs if the water's in the lake or river already? Well, that's because some of the water stays underground, and that type of water's called groundwater. It's also another type of storing water.

The Earthquake yesterday

2nd September, 2009

I didn't expect an earthquake to happen but it actually did. Yesterday, at the Middle School campus, at lunch break, about 12 o clock, a black snake( I have no idea what type of species it is) slithered out of a hole near a tree freaking out many students as it passes by. I was noticing why that snake randomly slithered out of that hole? Well, it's actually because that most of the animals could sense if there's an earthquake before humans do. 3 hours later, the earthquake began as in BOOM BOOM BAM BAM.An earthquake starts when its tectonic plates underwater rises up but one of the tectonic plates rose up than the other in Indonesia causing a tsunami and 536 people died from that earthquake. I really don't know how those 536 people died but I think they died because maybe some or many died from falling buildings and bridges and died inside a building( like that house on the top right corner) but most of the people died in West Java. Most of the people in Indonesia needed to evacuate from their homes so they would be safe.

The Taiwan flood caused by Morakot, the worst typhoon in 50 years

Typhoon Morakot has caused massive damage in Chiayi City of Taiwan and it killed more than 500 people from mud slides and the flood. As you can see, this is a girl who was rescued. She looks like as if she was a victim of a mudslide. Typhoon Morakot rained 2 and a 1/2 meters of water every two days in Taiwan. Since Taiwan has a lot of mountains, the flood rose up instead of spreading out. After that, it rained on the mountains while passing through the ground and its rock . Once the water passes through the ground and rock, both of them become slippery and then it creates a mudslide which kills or bury the people on the bottom of the mountain alive. The reason why Taiwan gets a lot of typhoons is because it's not near the equator like Indonesia and Papua New Guinea or maybe it's because of Global Warming and also, it makes the people sad because some or all of their family relatives died from the typhoon. It also destroyed a major hotel and if Taiwan wasn't mountainous, there would be less deaths.