Category Social Sciences

Which river cuts the US into two?

Mississippi River, the longest river of North America, draining with its major tributaries an area of approximately 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million square km), or about one-eighth of the entire continent. The Mississippi River lies entirely within the United States. Rising in Lake Itasca in Minnesota, it flows almost due south across the continental interior, collecting the waters of its major tributaries, the Missouri River (to the west) and the Ohio River (to the east), approximately halfway along its journey to the Gulf of Mexico through a vast delta southeast of New Orleans, a total distance of 2,340 miles (3,766 km) from its source. With its tributaries, the Mississippi drains all or part of 31 U.S. states and two provinces in Canada.

As the central river artery of a highly industrialized nation, the Mississippi River has become one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world, and, as the unruly neighbour of some of the continent’s richest farmland, it has been subjected to a remarkable degree of human control and modification.

 

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The McMahon Line is the boundary between which two Asian countries?

McMahon Line, frontier between Tibet and Assam in British India, negotiated between Tibet and Great Britain at the end of the Shimla Conference (October 1913–July 1914) and named for the chief British negotiator, Sir Henry McMahon. 

The Chinese have maintained this position to the present day and also have claimed that Chinese territory extends southward to the base of the Himalayan foothills. This frontier controversy with independent India led to the Sino-Indian hostilities of October–November 1962. In that conflict the Chinese forces occupied Indian Territory south of the McMahon Line but subsequently withdrew after a cease-fire had been achieved.

 

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Which roman god usually depicted with two faces, and after whom the month of January is named?

Janus was the Roman god of doors, choices, beginnings and endings. The first month of the year is called January after him. He is usually depicted with two faces, one on each side of the head. He was one of the earliest gods of Rome, sometimes referred to as the “god of gods” or diuom deo.

Janus was a porter of heaven and a guardian god of gates and doors. He was the Roman God of Beginnings and his name was an obvious choice for the first month of the year.

The origins on Janus vary and unlike other Roman and Greek gods, Janus may have been a mortal who came from Thessaly and was welcomed into Latium by Camise. They got married, shared the kingdom and had many children together.

 

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What is Humidity?

Humidity is the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere. The more water evaporates in a given area, the more water vapor rises into the air, and the higher the humidity of that area is. Hot places tend to be more humid than cool places because heat causes water to evaporate faster.

It might sound like water evaporation is a bad thing. Liquid water is useful, plus, you know, essential for all life. Water vapor doesn’t seem like it’s useful for much of anything–other than making you uncomfortable. Believe it or not, though, water evaporation and humidity serve a critical function of the natural world. We couldn’t do without it!

When liquid water evaporates into gaseous water vapor, it has completed one third of the all-important water cycle. The water cycle is nature’s way of distributing water to things that need it. If water didn’t evaporate, we wouldn’t have clouds, and it would never rain!

 

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Why do helium balloons float in air?

Helium balloons work by the same law of buoyancy. In this case, the helium balloon that you hold by a string is floating in a “pool” of air (when you stand underwater at the bottom of a swimming pool, you are standing in a “pool of water” maybe 10 feet deep — when you stand in an open field you are standing at the bottom of a “pool of air” that is many miles deep). The helium balloon displaces an amount of air (just like the empty bottle displaces an amount of water). As long as the helium plus the balloon is lighter than the air it displaces, the balloon will float in the air.

Why are helium and hydrogen so much lighter than air? It’s because the hydrogen and helium atoms are lighter than a nitrogen atom. They have fewer electrons, protons and neutrons than nitrogen atoms do, and that makes them lighter (the approximate atomic weight of hydrogen is 1, helium is 4 and nitrogen is 14). Approximately the same number of atoms of each of these elements fills approximately the same amount of space. Therefore, the gases made of lighter atoms are lighter.

 

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What are Ockhi, Vardah, Fani and Nilam?

Issuing an “orange” alert, the India Meteorological Department announced the arrival of the first tropical storm of the season, cyclone Ockhi over the districts in South Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Lakshadweep. The name Ockhi is coined by Bangladesh, which in Bengali means ‘eye’. According to Hurricane Research Division, tropical cyclones are named to provide ease of communication between forecasters and the general public regarding forecasts, watches, and warnings. Cyclones forming in the North Indian Ocean basin are named by the Indian Meteorological Department. The next cyclone will be named by India and it will be called ‘Sagar’.

Cyclone Vardah hit the Tamil Nadu coast on Monday afternoon, making landfall in Pulicat. The Met office said the cyclonic storm would take about six hours to completely cross on to land, with the landfall taking about two hours. The landfall is when the eye of the storm hits land. The eye of Cyclone Vardah is 15 km in diameter and it hit the coast at a wind speed of 130 to 150 kmph, bringing with it heavy rain. The name Vardah was given by Pakistan. The name of cyclones in the Indian Ocean Region are decided by the member countries, which are India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar, Maldives and Oman. Cyclone Nada was named by Oman.

A cyclone named Fani is a massive cyclonic formation over the south of Bay of Bengal which is expected to make landfall in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Do you know the low-pressure belt of cyclone forms in Sri Lanka and then from there it turns north-west towards the southern Indian states. According to Mahesh Palawat, who works at Skymet Weather, this cyclone may cause hot winds from northeast and are expected to blow over Mumbai and adjoining areas in Maharashtra. Also, dust storms may likely to occur in Rajasthan as an impact; heat wave in Madhya Pradesh could follow.

Cyclonic Storm Nilam was the deadliest tropical cyclone to directly affect South India since Cyclone Jal in 2010. Originating from an area of low pressure over the Bay of Bengal on October 28, 2012, the system began as a weak depression 550 km (340 mi) northeast of Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Over the following few days, the depression gradually intensified into a deep depression, and subsequently a cyclonic storm by October 30. It made landfall near Mahabalipuram on October 31 as a strong cyclonic storm with peak winds of 85 km/h (50 mph). In Chennai’s Marina Beach, strong winds pushed piles of sand ashore and seawater reached nearly a 100 m (330 ft) inland. Schools and colleges in the city remained closed for more than three days.

 

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