earth
Just like water, air and other natural elements, the soil may be considered a resource; it is, however, a non-renewable resource (FAO, 2015; APPA, 2012) – or a potentially renewable one if it is considered from a geological point of…
earth
Rocks embedded a few kilometers below the surface are an ideal habitat too: some microorganisms live in tiny interstitial spaces of rocks which are 3,2 km beneath the subsoil and they are able to tolerate high pressure levels, radiation and…
earth
The different landscapes that we analysed in the previous section are distributed in the five continents of the Earth. Observing the Earth, it is possible to notice that most of emerged lands are occupied by mountains (76%), while plains only…
earth
Going down deep in the Earth’s crust, the temperatures increase gradually (about 3°C every 100 m): this phenomenon is well-known in mines, where very high temperatures are reached in the deep, and where the galleries have to be ventilated to…
earth
In the last 50 years the world population has passed from 2.5 billion to 6 billion, and estimates say that it should reach 8 billion in the year 2025. A consequence of this demographic growth was an intense urbanization and,…
earth
The highest waterfalls in the world are located in Venezuela. The famous Salto Angel is 979 metres high. The widest waterfall is in Asia, in Laos: it is the Khone waterfall and, although it is only 70 m high, it…
earth
One of the most famous volcanic disasters was the eruption of Vesuvio in 79 A.D., which destroyed the cities of Ercolano and Pompei. The stages of the eruption were carefully described by Plinio il Grande: the eruption started with an…
earth
The activity of some volcanoes is characterized by violent explosions that break the magma into fragment of different size. Those bits of magma are launched high and then fall down at very high speed, like a burning cloud that hits…
earth
In order to understand the number of factors that make a water undersaturated or oversaturated, there is an experiment that we can carry out in the kitchen while we wait for the water to boil before cooking pasta. If we…