Mount Everest

People used to think that Kangchenjunga was the world's highest mountains. Then, in 1852, the Great Trigonometrical Survey, of India, was completed, which measured all the countries land features. The Survey showed that Mount Everest(then called Peak XV) was the world's highest mountain. The mountains name was suggested in 1865, as a tribute to the Surveyor General of India at that time, that is, Sir George Everest, who led the Survey.



The height of Mount Everest reckoned to be 8840 metre, which has since been adjusted as improved measuring methods have been used.




Mt. Everest is a part of the Great Himalayan Range, and forms a natural border, between China and Nepal. It is believed that the mountain rises its height 4 metre every year.



The mountain range is young-fold mountain range. It is formed when the Eurasian and Indian techtonic plates collided 30 to 50 million years ago.




Mount Everest is also called as a Mountain of Junk. The people and their teams who have climbed Mt. Everest have dropped more than 50 tonnes of rubbish. In 2001, local guides collected more than 6 tonnes of paper bags, tents, ropes, clothes, aluminium ladders, batteries, oxygen bottles and plastic cans. Nepal, now charges 3,000 euros deposit which is returned only if they remove all their rubbish.



Hillary, Sir Edmund Percival, mountain climber and Antarctic explorer, who, with the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norkay, was the first to reach the summit of Mount, the world’s highest peak.

Mount Everest is Southern Tibet

More than 1,000 people have climbed Mount Everest, since it was conquered in 1953.


Climbing activity continues to increase, however, and the environmental future of the Mount Everest area remains uncertain.

Lightning and Thunderstorms

Clouds are made up of water droplets together with the dust in the atmosphere at an altitude of 1 to 16 km. These droplets move downward while the air currents upwards. These movements cause different charges. Lightning occurs when the oppositely charged clouds collide with each other. Lightning can be seen as a streak of bright light and sound. There are of very high voltage(minimum 2 million) and they rush towards the ground through the moisture filled air.



Lightning strike could destroy life and property. It is therefore necessary to take measures to protect ourselves. During lightning and thunderstorm a house or a building is safe place. If you are travelling by car or by bus, you are safe inside with windows and doors of the vehicle shut.
Lightning can strike telephone cords, electric wires and metal pipes. Avoid bathing suring thunderstorms so that you can avoidcontact with the running water.

Lightning Strikes the Capitol Building in Washington

Perhaps 90 percent of the lightning flashes are said to be negative and the remaining, positive. The average interval between successive lightning strokes is 0.02 sec and the average flash lasts 0.25 sec.

It is said that lightning flashes consist of multiple events.There are 42 flashes which are preceded by a leader stroke.Ball lightning is a rare phenomenon in which the discharge takes the form of a slowly moving, luminous ball that sometimes explodes.

The lightning surges in there own path towards the earth, can strike power lines and antenna and pass through wires to the terminal equipments such as TV.the huge voltage current, even through of short life,can damage the electrical components and electronic circuits which are usually designed for low power.

Nearly 40 percent of all farm fires and 75,000 forest fires are started due to lightning. However, lightning enriches the soil. This is by forming nitrogen-dioxide which dissolves in rain water and forms nitric acid, which is and essential nutrient for plant growth.

Meteorites

Meteors are tiny meteoroids that burn up as they travel through the earth's atmosphere producing tiny streaks of light. Meteorites are meteoroids that reach the surface of earth without being fully burnt. The meteoroid material is left by comets as they pass close to the Sun.



More than 3,000 meteorites land on Earth every year. Most fall in the sea, but a handful are seen to fall on the land.



The fragmentation of the meteorite causes a visual effect called a shooting star.

Willamette Meteorite

Meteorites from mars

Atleast eight meteorites have fallen on theEarth from the Mars. The Nakhla meteorite fell in Egypt in 1911. Those meteorites tell us that the Mars had once running water.




There are atleast three main types of meteorites: stony, iron, or stony-iron.
The stony meteorites contain silicate minerals.They are subdivided into Chondrites and Achondrites meteorites

Chondrite meteorite

Achondrite Meteorite

The Iron meteorites contain a high percentage of iron and nickel. They are created in the rupture of asteroids.

Iron meteorite

Stony-iron meteorite

Gao Meteorite

The Hoba meteorite, the largest in the world was found in Nambia in 1920. It measures 2.73x 2.43 and is 82 percent iron and 16 percent nickel. It weighs more than 60 tonnes.

Hoba Meteorite

The Tent, found in Greenland in 1894, originally known by its Eskimos name, as Ahnighito. This meteorite weighs about 57.3 tonnes. One can view this meteorite, it the New York Museum of Natural History.

Ahnighito

Large meteorites can form a crater when they strike the Earth.

Vredefort, South Africa

Chicxulub, Yucatan, Mexico

The collisionof the meteorite compresses and excavates the ground, leaving a crater.




The Popigai crater in Siberia, Russia is the fourth largest impact crater on the earth.

Popigai, Russia

Today about 150 impact craters can be identified including the Wolfe Crater of Australia.

Hurricane

Hurricanes are tropical cyclones that originate near the equator, that is near the doldrums. The word hurricane comes from Mayan word Hurakan, which means the evil god. Hurricane have left many notorious marks in history.




Hurricanes are huge storms, which can measure about 650 km in diameter. These violent winds cause most damage by flattening whole buildings and uprooting trees. Hurricanes develop as clusters of thunderstorms over warm tropical seas. Ice crystals form on the top of the clouds. They tighten into a spiral with calm central ring of low pressure called a hurricane's eye. Air descends into the calm eye, leaving it free of the cloud.


The fastest sustained winds in a hurricane in the USA measured 322km/h, with 338km/h gust, on 17-18 August 1969, when Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi.

Hurricane Gordon Taken from the Space Shuttle

Improved system of predication and communication have reduced the loss of lives due to hurricanes. But the damage of properties still continues.

Hurricanes generally move in a path resembling the curve of a parabola. In the areas where the hurricanes travel in the same direction of the storm, the destruction is very high.
As hurricane pass over cool water or land, their intensity lessens.


In 1970 a tropical hurricane whipped up huge waves that suged over the low-lying mouth of river ganges in Bangladesh. Upto half a million people lost their lives. The hurricane moves along 25 to 50 km per hour as warmed air rises and swirls most powerful near its centre. Hurricanes speed generally varies.

The worst hurricanes of the 21st century are Hurricane Jeanne of 2004 which killed over 3,000 in Haiti, and Hurricane Karina of 2005 which left 1,417 dead in Louisiana, USA and neighbouring states.

Icebergs

An iceberg is a large piece of ice that floats in water. It may have been broken away from a glaciers or ice-shelf. The word iceberg probably means ice-hill. The tallest iceberg ever measured was 168 mts high.

Floating Icebergs

Icebergs seen in the Arctic

Small icebergs are known as growlers, because of the noise they make.

Icebergs of Greenland

Icebergs on Baffin Bay, the arm of the North Atlantic Ocean

Icebergs in the North-Atlantic mostly comes glaciers on greenland, and those in the South-Atlantic from the Antarctic.

Penguins seen on icebergs

Icebergs seen on the Antarctica

One of the biggest icebergs known as B-15 broke away from the ross ice-shelf, Antarctica in March 2000. It had an average length of 295 km and width of 37 km giving it a total area about the size of Jamaica!




About 10,000 to 15,000 new icebergs are formed every year. The process of breaking away is called "Calving".


Seven eights of an iceberg is below the surface of the sea.


Icebergs float because, they are made of fresh water which is less dense than the sea water.

Happy To Be Back Again

Hi friends, it's long since i have posted to my blog. I had to spend time on my children's education and their health. Here, I am back again. My next post would be something different. Wait and Watch!
Until then, view these real cakes. They are not made of plastics nor artificial things. It can be eaten as a whole.
Enjoy Eating These Cakes!!!!











To enjoy eating those cakes, you need this,