Year 9 Explain the Formation of Deserts

Year 9 students have been studying why deserts form in certain areas of the world and have put together the following playlist of videos to explain the factors involved.

Nintendo: A Global Company

A. Arshad has produced an excellent review of Nintendo's operation as a global company which is below. It demonstrates well placed examples at times and is an example of how to make a presentation visually interesting:

Evaluation of Coastal Management at Swanage

J.Hutchings (Y9) has written an evaluation of coastal management at Swanage. Click on the image to enlarge it, then read the evaluation underneath.

Do you agree with his assesment of the current strategies?
Would you manage it differently?
Would you manage it at all?

(Comment Below or tweet @bsgeography)

Evaluation

Judging by the fact that the officials in charge of the area (described on annotated map) have a main focus of ensuring a sustainable future for the coastal area of Swanage, I think that there is little to be done regarding changes.  It is said that plans dealing with the future of the coast are currently being reviewed, processed and produced, but in the meantime they are continuing to allow the defences already set up to prevent erosion getting out of hand.

Regarding the defences themselves, however, I think that a different approach would have been more adequate.  Having a long system of groynes stretching across some of the coast is good, as it helps to stabilise the beach and keep it in one piece.  The sea walls do their job, but it doesn’t quite meet the needs of a sustainable balance.  They are particularly expensive (one of the most expensive coastal defence concepts) and are also unappealing to the public.  While it may meet the needs of the environment, it fails to do the same socially and economically.

There are no ideal options when it comes to social sustainability, as even though there may be more suitable solutions in terms of appearance, none contribute significantly enough to make it worthwhile.  However, perhaps a series of rip-raps or gabions could have been used, as these are less expensive than sea walls and still manage to absorb the waves’ energy relatively successfully.

Lost Continent Discovered

·         21^st February 2013: Scientists have discovered huge pieces of a continent from millions of years ago in the Indian Ocean.

According to the “National Geoscience”: scientists from England, South Africa, Norway and Germany have discovered land which is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and has a width of 25- 30 km from 50-80 million years ago from a continent called Rodinia.

Scientists think that thisland was removed as a result of volcanic explosions which broke the land off from the main continent. Then gigantic waves caused by earth quakes sent the island to the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Scientists named this piece “Mauritia”.

Scientists say that the continents today are all detached from Rodinia and made today’s world in the last 1 billion years.

It is 2 thousand km away from Africa’s southeast, in the 115 islands of the Seychelles and the island of Maritius. While scientists were investigating the sand pieces there, they discovered that the pieces belonged to a volcanic explosion which had happened 9 million years ago.

According to the Norwegian scientists, the pieces of the sand which they took the sample from Seychelles include Zirconium. They thought the Zirconium in the sand came from another piece which had met the bottom of the Indian Ocean as a result of the volcano and the waves.

With sonar and seismic submarines, it has been proved that there was this land with a width of 25- 30 km under the Indian Ocean.

By N. Aslanoba (y9)

2 amazing coastal landforms

The description below and pictures were researched at the start of our current year 9 course. Could you name them or mention some of the types of erosion involved?

One of the most interesting things about coasts is what the sea sculpts out of the rock. When you get cliffs where the sea is, then that is where the sea does its work. There have been pictures where the sea has sculpted something out of the cliff and it creates an amazing picture! An example of this is the pictures at the bottom. Somehow in the picture on the left the ground is sort of floating because all of the rock under it has been eroded by the water and it creates an amazing sight when you see rock floating. In the picture on the right it shows how hard that piece of rock is because it’s the last bit of rock around. This is because all the rest has been eroded which shows that all the rest were softer than that rock.

 

T Hammond, yr 9

Wave causes and types

The work below is an excellent effort from the start of our current year 9 work:

We use the coast for many things and also we go there for the pleasure of it all. We use it for energy e.g: big wind farms as it gets very windy at the coast and other reusable energy and also solar panels (for the sunnier places in the world). The subject I will be talking about today is a particular feature at the coast that people look at for pleasure and that is waves. Waves can hypnotise people for hours on end just watching the beauty of the waves breaking, crashing and the sounds they make and of course the surfing side of it. There is so much to talk about with waves and the details which I shall go into now.

Waves

Waves are created by friction of the wind when it’s blowing over the surface of the water usually far out sea. The wave gets pushed into the direction of the wind creating a swell which then creates the actual wave. The wave picks up so much energy from the wind and the friction it causes that it’s at high speed out at sea until it hits land or it just loses its energy because the wind might stop. A wave is affected mostly by the strength of the wind and the longer it blows for. When the wave starts getting close to land, the more shallow it gets, the wave starts to slow down and the wave starts to curl like an arc (that’s the perfect time for someone to catch a wave with a surfboard). There is so much more to see under a wave than above as there’s a whole cycle. The whole wave is rotating forwards like a spinning cylinder very fast. An ordinary wave is called a constructive wave which is when it deposits sand and other materials to make more land. Another kind of wave that can be caused is a destructive wave which is caused by more powerful winds like storms out at sea. This means more friction is caused by a more powerful wind meaning that the waves will be rougher. When the wave hits land, it can be very tall and has a short wave length unlike constructive waves which have a long wave length. Destructive waves also have a very strong back wash which erodes the beach. Some waves can get extremely big. The biggest wave ever recorded was 1740ft

As you can see the wave activity underneath.

By C Webber, yr 9

Sustainability Explained

Another excellent video to promote discussion about sustainability. Are these the only aims of sustainability? Do they go too far? is this achievable?

Case Study on Rainforest Destruction

H.Guthrie has produced an excellent case study of the effects of the Tucurui Dam and Trans Amazonian Highway. Click on the images to make them larger and clearer:

Belo Monte Dam

A.Zhu and J.Dalton have done a very thorough presentation evaluating the potential consequences of the Belo Monte Dam project in the Amazon Rainforest. It contains plenty of specific information and is easy on the eye!

Belo Monte Dam : Human and Environmental Consequences on Prezi

Social Good Summit - get involved

The UN Social Good Summit starts today. There are some excellent ways to follow whats going on:

1) You can follow and watch it live online here:

2) You can follow it on twitter with the hashtag: #sgsGlobal

3) We have also set up a live twitter feed on this site, just click on 'Live News' to the right of this post to watch it update:

The video below is an excellent rundown of what it is about and how you could get involved.....

Evaluation of the Olympic Games

Here is a year 9 pupil's evaluation of the Olympic Games. Well done C.Bloxham for your excellent work:


There are 4 main reasons why the Olympic Games are good, and there are 2 reasons why the Olympic Games are bad. The reasons why they are good are: jobs, urban regeneration, transport improvements and tourism. The bad reasons are: cost and overtaking of the TV.
One of the main reasons why the Olympic Games are happening in the East-end of London is for urban regeneration; this is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. This is good for London and Britain, because in these areas there are higher crime rates, and lower life expectancy. Bringing up the East-end of London to match the West-end is bringing London up to be a strong capital. It would also make London a better place to visit, like New York.
Transport has made a massive improvement, helping make London’s travel more efficient with better quality. These improvements include: channel tunnel shuttle link from Stratford to Kings Cross, 45% capacity of Jubilee line, extensions to the DLR and £1bn improvement to London East line. These improvements are not only good for the games, but they are also a long term improvement for the future as well.
Another reason why the Olympic Games are good is the tourism. Because of the Olympic Games London has grown in profile. People would know about London more that before. The tourism will be higher during and after the Olympic Games than before it. This would lead to an increase of money and the Olympic organising committee hope that it would pay back any loss that they have conceded
My final reason why the Olympics are good is because of the Jobs. This point is mainly good but it is also quite bad. With the building and the working of the Olympic Games, jobs are produced, which is great for the unemployed people, although it is only a temporary job, and they will soon be unemployed again.
My first reason why it is bad is because of the cost. It is predicted that the total cost of staging the Games will be £2.375bn. This causes a rise in our taxes. This causes people who were originally not bothered about the Olympics to really not like it, and could cause homelessness to people who couldn’t even afford it before. Although they think that they will be able to gain back the money by tourism, I think it is highly unlikely.
Also my final reason for the Olympics being a bad reason is the taking over of the T.V. Although this may not seem important, it makes people not like the Olympics, and people who may watch a programme, may not want the programme to be cut for the Olympics.
All of these reasons are valid, and either way could make a good argument. But I think the Olympics are good because all the reasons for the Olympic Games are more environmental and the reasons against are more personal.

For my research I used this website: http://olympics.pthimon.co.uk/index2.htm

New Research Links Added

You can now search all of our twitter hashtags by subject by clicking on the research Tab at the top of this page. The link to the twitter search is at the top of that page.

We have also added some excellent blogs and websites to that Tab, both specialist and general.

If you are a twitter user, you can look at our latest tweets under our username: @BSgeography, or search our tweets using #bs followed by any geographical topic.

Climatic hazards, Sustainability and Tectonics are the most developed at present.

Tesco. A Review of a Global Company by A Swain

Tesco on Prezi

4th Form Student published in the Geographical Times

Well done to R Salvesen for a good accomplishment. Lets hope more boys can follow your example.

Prezi on Nike's production pathways

Nike Production Prezi on Prezi

Case Study on OK Jamaica Shoes by J.Sheridan

This article was a winner in Ms Sypropoulos' 4th form class competition for the best case study.

Ok Jamaica shoes
(Case study)

A T.N.C (Trans National Corporation) is a company which operates in many different countries in the world.
Some jobs that are done by the workers are cutting and butchering which is done at the first stage where they slaughter and take the skins off the cows in a place called a slaughter house/ abattoir. The next stage is where they turn the cow skin to leather with the use of chemicals, this job is call tannery. The next and last stage of making the shoes is where in the OK Jamaica shoes factory they put the shoe together ( 800 pairs per day) with 100 Ethiopian workers doing the jobs of sewing, cutting and sticking. After that they simply export the shoes to more economically developed countries for example the U.S.A, Europe and some African countries.
The problems faced by the workers from killing the cow to putting the shoe together is that they have extremely low pay for the amount of hours that they work. For example, a worker who works at OK Jamaica shoe factory earns £14 per month, which is 50p per day whilst their monthly house rent is £10…so overall their profit after all that hard work is £4 per month, which is 14p per day!...
Other problems faced are that in the slaughter house/abattoir the workers who dissect the cows are wearing no gloves. So if a worker cuts himself doing something and he touches the inside of the animal, then he risks getting infected. But if they only get £4 he will not be able to afford medical treatment, and if he took time off work he would not get paid at all. In the jobs in the first stage such as where you have to skin the cow, the rooms are very hot and the work is very physical, and to replace that energy used or salt lost you have to eat energy rich food or any food. But, if you are on a very tight budget and can’t afford much food, you will have no energy in you. Not eating food will weaken your immune system and therefore you coul potentially catch a virus.
The only good points about working in a type of factory like OK Jamaica shoes is that it’s better than nothing, and at least you’re getting regular income.

By J.Sheridan

The Pros and Cons of Globalisation

Please take the time to read this fantastic essay on the pros and cons of Globalisation as perceived by Robert Salvesen in Year 9 :

Globalisation refers to the growing relationships between people and culture, and the growing economic independence of countries worldwide. This economic growth could be through trade, technology, communications and media.

When our teacher stood before us and proudly stated that he was the fashion icon that we all should look to everybody was laughing. However minutes later when he showed us the negative aspects to globalisation in the fashion industry no-one was laughing. Behind every logo in the world there are positives and negatives. Through this document I will be assessing the pros and cons of globalisation.

If you take a pair of jeans and trace the manufacturing pathway it really enforces how globalisation has affected most of the products we buy today. The cotton for the jeans will have been made in Africa, the polyester thread; Japan and the metal components; Europe. So when you buy a pair of jeans from a high street stores the components will have been brought from all over the globe and the product itself is an example of globalisation.

If you think back to the last time you bought something special. The happiness felt when your new pair of tennis shoes arrives and the excitement as you hold them in your hands. However what most people don’t realise is that your hands are not the first to touch them. We do not think of the little hands that have worked day and night to achieve the end product. By little I do not mean minor parts I mean children. Child labour is in my opinion the most severe negative that has been brought about by globalisation. Many worldwide companies are fixated with profit. They do not consider the wellbeing of their workers in other countries.  Companies employ children for many reasons. Children do not know the rights and wrongs of the working world so can be exploited easily. With an adult who might have had previous jobs it would be harder to exploit them with long hours and minor pay. If you have a child working in a cotton factory from the age of 5, living away from his parents then by the age of 6 or 7 the work which they do will just be the norm. All of this means that the owners of these factories can work these children for long hours and pay them very little in order to gain as much turnover as possible when selling to companies.  A few years ago UNICEF carried out research in which they found that 250 million children were involved in child labour, and being exploited by the factories in which they were working as a result in globalisation. 32% of children in Africa are involved in child labour and 22% of children in Asia.

Many children in Asia work spinning cotton into thread. They first have to gather the cotton together. They carry huge masses of cotton and spend there time working in sweltering conditions.  However the temperature can quickly drop and those who have worked throughout the day may be vulnerable to illnesses such as pneumonia.  The actual spinning occurs on machines which have no guards or safety mechanisms which leave young children open to severe injuries.  The atmosphere is full of just and dirt and many children leave work with sever lung conditions which shortens their lives dramatically.

In my opinion globalisation has definitely moved our technology and product range into the 21^st century but it seems that is has had no effect on the methods of work. If technology can evolve from the Victorian era where there were no televisions or iPods to what we see before us today than there should be no reason why we should not strive to stop the children who are exploited daily, have no education and no hope in their lives and try to give the children of the future a better chance in life where ever they are in the world.                 

By looking at the diagram above we can see that the most child labour occurs in Africa. Once again looking at the manufacturing pathway of a pair of jeans we see that all the raw materials such as cotton come from Africa. These are the jobs which require a lot of work but can be done by children. As a result of Globalisation we can see that the demand for cotton has increased and this has also pushed up the figures of child labour.

However there are positives to globalisation. The occurrence of globalisation allows us to communicate faster via email, mobile messaging and the internet. As a result we are all now connected to each other and able to contact someone on the other side of the world which previously was never possible.  This increase in means and accessibility of communication is one positive effect of globalisation. It is now possible to order clothing from China and receive it within a week of placing that order. Before globalisation this would not have been possible. The world is shrinking and soon our Earth will just become a super computer. We all are already linked into this computer and soon books and paper will not be necessary.  The amount of information shared on the internet every hour in 2012 is more than the total amount shared in the whole of 2003. This is evidence that our world is shrinking and everyone is becoming closer and closer. This ability to learn more, share more and connect more with people from all over the world is in effect the result of globalisation. Globalisation will keep going until we all are touching. The song “We’ve got the whole world in our hands” describes the future in my opinion. Soon we will have the whole world at our fingertips. This is the positive side to globalisation.

To conclude I think that Globalisation is an extremely positive occurrence to anyone living in an MEDC. We feel the positive aspects of this growth and development. We can now contact others, make a phone call to Australia and order products from the U.S.A. However what we do not feel is the knock on effect of this development. We do not feel the negative hard hitting truths that the citizens and children of LEDC’s feel. I think that we should take advantage of globalisation and learn to adapt to the future technology but we should also see this global development as an opportunity to help and bring the LEDC’s into the future as well. We do have the whole world in our hands. So why don’t we lend that hand to the children of the LEDC’s.

Robert Salvesen

Introduction to GCSE Geography for 4th Formers

Sustainability - The Key to the Future

By Robert Salvesen 4th form.

All of us in our lives have looked at and admired sculptures and works of art in awe. We have been astounded by Da Vinci, and stunned by Michelangelo, but what we do not realise is that the cities we live in are sculptures and works of art, sculpted from concrete. Many people look at cities like Los Angeles and London and think what it is like to design something of that importance.

Recently in our class, we were given the opportunity to design and sculpt our own city. The question posed to us was whether our cities could be sustainable, like Mazdar and Curitiba. We studied how the brains behind these cities had answered the question: How do you make a city sustainable? We studied the natural shade in Mazdar, caused by narrow streets. We looked at the efficient rubbish disposal system in Curitiba and in our groups we started to incorporate these elements into our cities. We studied the three tiers of sustainability: Social, Economic and Environmental and in our groups we researched how incorporating certain elements in our cities, would meet the needs of our citizens, because the definition of sustainability is meeting the needs of people for the present and future generations.

The class certainly responded to the task, producing wind turbines, innovative new transport systems and off sea wind farms. We had underground electric transport systems, pyramids covered with solar panels, recycling stations made out of recycled materials and many more sustainable ideas. After many lessons, the contents of our recycling bins and many rolls of sellotape later our cities were complete, and for a moment, we stood back and imagined ourselves as architects, admiring the new cities that stood before us.

I can definitely say on behalf of the class that our knowledge of sustainability has increased through this productive task, and we all have experienced the question that architects now face: What makes a city sustainable?