My Weird School Fast Facts: Geography Read online

  Dedication

  To Emma

  Contents

  Dedication

  The Beginning

  Chapter 1: What Is Geography, and Who Cares Anyway?

  Chapter 2: Planet Earth

  Chapter 3: The Continents

  Chapter 4: Water

  Chapter 5: Mountains, Deserts, and Forests

  Chapter 6: The Fifty United States

  Chapter 7: Natural Disasters

  The Ending

  Back Ad

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Books by Dan Gutman

  Credits

  Copyright

  Photo credits

  About the Publisher

  My name is Professor A.J. and I know everything there is to know about geography.

  Geography is cool. Do you know why? Because it’s all about exploding volcanoes that shoot red-hot lava up in the air, and earthquakes that swallow cars, and tornadoes that pick up cows and fling them across the highway, and hurricanes that rip trees out of the ground, and all kinds of cool stuff like that.

  Now, just wait a minute there, Arlo!

  Oh no! It’s Andrea Young, this annoying girl in my class with curly brown hair. She calls me by my real name because she knows I don’t like it.*

  Yes, my name is Andrea, and I know a lot about geography too. Because I’m in the gifted and talented program at school.

  But geography isn’t just about natural disasters. Geographers explore and describe the earth and the people on it. They try to explain where things are, why they’re there, how they change over time, and what all that has to do with the humans who live there. Geography is about our planet, the continents, and lakes, and rivers—

  Zzzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry! I dozed off there for a minute. I couldn’t help it, because Andrea is so boring.

  But geography isn’t boring. Did you know that more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface is made out of Jell-O? Did you know that when you reach the very top of Mount Everest, there’s a McDonald’s? Did you know that in Antarctica all the toilet bowls are upside down?

  Arlo, you made all that up, and everybody knows it!

  Well, yeah. But I do know a lot of true stuff about geography too. True weird stuff. Do you want to know what it is?

  Well, I’m not going to tell you.

  Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. There’s just one thing you have to do.

  Turn the page.

  Go ahead! Turn it! It’s not like I’m going to turn it for you. I’m inside the book!

  Yours truly,

  Professor A.J.

  (the professor of awesomeness)

  Andrea Young (I’m going to Harvard someday.)*

  I can handle the second part of this question. The answer is nobody. That’s who cares about geography.

  Okay, can we move on to the cool stuff, like exploding volcanoes and tornadoes that pick up cows and fling them across the highway? That’s what I’d want to read about.

  No, Arlo! Geography is really important! Why don’t you go sit down over there and play with your little video games while I explain geography to the people?

  Sure! I love playing video games.

  (Don’t tell Andrea, but it’s okay for you to skip this part of the book and go straight to the chapter about exploding volcanoes and flying cows.)

  Just ignore him. It’s an attention-getting device.

  It was the ancient Greeks who came up with the word “geography.” It means “to write (or describe) the earth.” They were the first geographers.

  But for thousands of years, people didn’t think much about geography. They had other things to worry about. You know what they worried about? They worried about whether or not they would have something to eat that day!

  I can understand that. If I was living in a cave somewhere and a woolly mammoth was chasing me, I wouldn’t be all that worried about describing the earth.

  Can I interrupt for a moment here? Were woolly mammoths actually made out of wool? I don’t think so. Because wool comes from sheep. I don’t think that sheep would willingly give up their wool just to keep some mammoths warm. I bet that if there were woolly mammoths today, they would be made out of cotton or some synthetic fabric.

  Just ignore Arlo. Anyway, geography didn’t really take off until the Chinese started to use compasses as a navigation tool around the year AD 1000. A compass is a tool that helps you know which direction you’re facing.

  Suddenly, brave sailors were able to travel beyond their small area and see the world. In the early 1400s, a Chinese explorer named Cheng Ho set sail on seven voyages to the lands around the China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

  Arlo, did you ever hear of Marco Polo?

  Sure. Everybody knows about Marco Polo. That’s a game we play in the pool during the summer. I am awesome at Marco Polo.

  No, dumbhead! Marco Polo was an Italian merchant who traveled to Asia and came home to tell everyone about the mysteries of the Far East.

  Oh yeah. I knew that. I was just yanking your chain. I know all about Marco Polo. He was that guy who went all the way to China and brought pasta and ice cream back to Europe. That guy was cool.*

  Actually, most historians say there’s no evidence of that. But even if Marco Polo didn’t bring back pasta and ice cream, his travels started the Age of Exploration. Brave explorers set off all over the world looking for gold, for new lands to conquer, and for spices.

  They traveled the world looking for spices? Why didn’t they just go to the supermarket? That’s what my mom does whenever she needs spices.

  They didn’t have supermarkets back then! But from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century, European explorers sailed all over the world. And after the printing press was invented in the 1400s, word got around that the world was an amazing place. Countries like the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain started setting up colonies all over, including ones in North America that eventually became the United States.

  Knowing about geography helped people spread themselves all over the world. It also helped people to understand their place in the world and who else lived in that world. That’s what geography is all about!

  Andrea thinks she is so smart because she knows a lot of stuff about geography. Why can’t a truck full of geography books fall on her head?

  In case you’re a total dumbhead, let me just start by telling you that Earth is the name of the planet we live on. Duh! Everybody knows that. If you didn’t know that, close this book right now and go to Walmart. They’re having a sale on brains.

  I’m sure everybody knows that the planet we live on is called Earth. But did you know that Earth is sort of like a giant rock that flies through space at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour?

  Whoa! You better hold on tight so you don’t fall off. Sixty-seven thousand miles per hour is way faster than my dad drives, even when he’s going over the speed limit.

  Like all the other planets in our solar system, Earth is constantly circling around the sun. Do you know how long it takes for the earth to go all the way around the sun just one time? 365 days. That’s exactly one full year. What an amazing coincidence!

  Satellite view of Earth and the moon

  While Earth is constantly moving around the sun, it’s also spinning around, like a top. If you’ve ever tried to rub your tummy and pat yourself on the head at the same time, you know how hard that can be. But Earth is very good at multitasking.

  How fast is Earth spinning? About a thousand miles an hour.

  Wow! No wonder stuff keeps sliding off my desk all the time.

  Actually, it doesn’t feel like Earth is moving at all. It’s sort of like when you’re in a car drivin
g down the highway at a constant speed. Close your eyes and you feel like you’re staying in one place.

  Speaking of cars, do you know how a car’s wheel turns around an axle? Well, the earth turns around this thing called an axis. The axis is not a real thing. It’s an imaginary line that goes through the North Pole and the South Pole.

  And by the way, the North Pole and the South Pole are imaginary things too. It’s not like you go to the end of the earth and there’s some big pole sticking out of the ground. That would be weird. The North and South Poles are just the points at the top and bottom of the earth.

  Geography sure has a lot of imaginary stuff. I used to have an imaginary friend, but we got into an argument one time, and we haven’t spoken to each other since.

  Do you know how long it takes Earth to spin around its axis just once? Twenty-four hours, or exactly one day. That’s why we have night and day, by the way. When your part of the earth is facing the sun, it’s daytime. When it turns around so it’s not facing the sun, you have night. And for people on the opposite side of the earth from you, your night is their day, and your day is their night.

  Confused yet? Me too! But don’t worry about it. Earth is going to keep on moving around the sun and spinning around its axis whether you know about it or not. And it’s not like you’re going to get tested on this stuff. At least not today.

  Speaking of imaginary lines, the equator is another one. It is right in the middle of the planet. Think of the equator as a belt that holds Earth’s pants up. So North America would be the shirt, and South America would be the pants.

  Everything above the equator is the earth’s Northern Hemisphere, and everything south of the equator is the earth’s Southern Hemisphere. A hemisphere is half of a sphere. Hemi means “half,” and sphere means “a round object.” So it has the perfect name!

  If you were to drive a car all the way around the equator, you would be driving 24,901 miles. You would also end up exactly where you started, so what would be the point of doing that? You might as well stay in one place.

  And if you drove a car all the way around the equator, you would probably drown. Because most of the area around the equator is water. And cars can’t drive through water.

  Hey, do you know what the earth is made of?

  It’s made of earth, of course! Duh! It was a trick question.

  Well, it’s not quite as simple as that, Arlo. Earth is made mostly of rock, and it has three main layers. There’s the crust, the thick center, and the core.

  The crust is where we live. The earth’s crust is between five and twenty-five miles thick. It’s sort of like a pie crust, but you wouldn’t want to eat the crust of the earth, because it would taste bad and you’d probably throw up. Nobody wants to eat earth.

  Underneath the earth’s crust is the mantle. It doesn’t have anything to do with that baseball player Mickey Mantle, even though it has the same name. But he was a great player, and he could bat both left-handed and right-handed. But not at the same time. That would be weird.

  The mantle is about eighteen hundred miles thick, and it’s made up of hot, gooey, partly melted rock called magma. Can you imagine how hot it must be if rocks are melting? Well, you don’t have to. In the depths of the lower mantle, it’s about 3,600ºF.

  And if you think that’s hot, underneath the mantle is the earth’s core. The inner core can reach temperatures up to 12,600°F. That’s so hot that when birds pick up worms, they have to use pot holders.

  Okay, that’s a joke.

  How old is the earth? Nobody knows for sure. Well, it’s not like the earth gets a birthday party every year, and we all blow out a certain number of candles. That would be a fire hazard anyway, because the earth is really old.

  Scientists think that the planet is about 4.6 billion years old. Yes, I said billion. That’s older than my grandmother, and she’s pretty old.

  By the way, the moon is younger than the earth. Rocks brought back from the moon by astronauts in 1970 were found to be about 4 billion years old, and new research shows the oldest rocks from the moon to be about 4.4 billion years old.

  How do scientists know how old the earth and the moon are? Because they’re really smart. Scientists use this thing called carbon dating to measure the ages of rocks.

  Carbon dating isn’t when two pieces of carbon go out on a date with each other. That would be weird. It’s when you determine how old something is by measuring how much carbon is left in it. I know, it sounds complicated. That’s because it is. If you want to find out how it works, grow up and become a scientist.

  In the song “Imagine,” John Lennon wrote, “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.” He was right.* The lines around the countries that you see on maps are more of those imaginary lines that geographers love so much. When you travel from one country to the next one, there isn’t a big black line on the ground separating the two countries. And if you go up into outer space and look down at Earth, you don’t see countries. They all blend in with one another. It’s too bad all the people in different countries can’t get along and blend in with each other like their countries do on maps.

  One last imaginary line is the international date line. This is the coolest of all the imaginary lines because it separates one day from the next day.

  The international date line is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the North Pole to the South Pole. So if you’re on a boat that crosses that line heading east, you have to go back a day in the calendar, and you get to live yesterday one more time. And if you’re on a boat that crosses the line heading west, you have to go forward one day in the calendar and miss a day of your life.

  That’s weird!

  And if you happen to find yourself standing right on the international date line with one foot on either side of it, there’s no telling what day you’re in.

  But you should really get back in the boat, because you’re about to drown.

  And that’s all you need to know about the earth.

  Arlo, do you know what a continent is?

  Sure. A continent is when you go to the bathroom in your pants.

  No, Arlo! You’re thinking of incontinence!

  I knew that. I just thought it would be funny to talk about going to the bathroom in your pants in a book about geography.

  Hey, speaking of going to the bathroom in your pants, can we talk about exploding volcanoes now?

  No! I’m going to try to put everything you just said out of my mind.

  A continent is a really large landmass. There are seven of them on the earth. Here they are, in size order from biggest to smallest: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia/Oceania.

  It’s hard to believe, but millions of years ago those seven continents were connected in one huge landmass called Pangaea. That means “all land.”

  Nobody knew that until 1912, when a German scientist named Alfred Wegener noticed that the coastlines of South America and Africa look like they could fit together, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

  You can see them for yourself if you look at a map. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

  And now we know how it happened. The earth’s crust is divided into these gigantic sections called tectonic plates. Some of these plates contain continents. Others carry the ocean floor. The plates float over the earth’s bubbling, boiling, molten mantle sort of like rafts in a swimming pool.

  And believe it or not, these tectonic plates are moving right now, even as you read this. But don’t worry. It’s not like you’re going to fall off the continent or anything. Tectonic plates can move only a few inches every year. They say that the continents move at about the same rate your fingernails grow.

  That’s just a weird comparison.

  By the way, the Arctic is not a continent! Scientists used to think it was a huge landmass covered by ice, just like Antarctica. But in 1958, they discovered there’s no landmass there. It’s just floating ice.

  How did they
figure that out? Simple. A submarine went under the ice cap and came out the other side!

  The USS Nautilus being prepared for its journey, 1958

  Asia

  If you made a list of the biggest, the highest, and the lowest continents, Asia would be the winner. It’s the biggest continent by far in square miles. It has the highest mountain in the world (Mount Everest). And it has the lowest point on the planet (the shores of the Dead Sea).

  Do you know how many people live in Asia? More than four billion. That’s a lot of people! In fact, more people live in Asia than on all the other continents put together.

  The Great Wall of China was begun in the eighth century BC. The Chinese wanted to defend their country from an invasion from the north. They worked on the wall for over two thousand years.

  Wow! My dad put up a wall in our basement. It only took a few days.

  That’s just silly, Arlo.

  By the way, people will tell you that the Great Wall is the only man-made object that can be seen from outer space. That’s baloney. The wall is only thirty feet at its widest point. No way you’re going to see that from space.

  In America, Stan is a guy’s name. But in Central Asia, stan means “homeland.” There are five countries there that end with “stan”: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. And if you can spell any of them, you should get the Nobel Prize.

  That’s a prize they give out to people who can spell weird country names.

  Did you ever wish you lived on an island? Well, you should go to Indonesia. This one country is made up of thirteen thousand islands! A lot of people must like to live on an island, because Indonesia is the fourth most-populated country in the world.