Some scientific knowledge from my memory, for sharing.

Ahh... The dead blog.

Heh. Bored for now, so I'll revive it for a bit.

I'm not sure to people, but somehow to me, I feel that I'm speaking too much when I'm talking about scientific knowledge about the world.

Specifically, The World and the Outer Space.

I should say, I'm really not boasting when I do that. Its just sharing some knowledge around.

But if you take it that way, I'm really sorry. But no offence, seriously.

Its just knowledge I learnt from 3 years of reading in news and Wikipedia.

Sooo... Here we go!

Firstly, Global Warming.

Been a bit hot lately in Singapore isn't it?

Well, perhaps it doesn't really apply only to Singapore. The highest temperature I saw in Korea was 20 degrees.

For a country that has degrees which could go as low as 5 degrees, 20 degrees is somewhat hot over there.

We can definitely feel it. The burning temperature of 34 degrees in Singapore.

Which I think is mostly attributed to the season of Summer in this period of the year.

So, its not really a big problem now. But if it stays like that till October or December, there's something to worry about.

Anyhoo, back to the main topic.

On the Global Warming, of course.

Surely you guys know about how it affects the temperature. We shall skip that.

Did you know an Ice shelf broke off in the Arctic?

An ice shelf is a large floating platform of ice on the Arctic. Think of it as a floating island made out of ice. The sizes of ice shelves that break off from a whole platform can be as big as the size of Rhode Island.

How does this affect us?

Well, the ice shelf won't really melt. Its not on the ice part. Instead, the ice in the arctic reflects light back to outer space, which is somewhat beneficial.

But when an ice shelf breaks, there is a space of water created between the ice shelves. Heat from the sun is allowed to warm up the areas of water between the ice shelves. Instead of heat from the sun, the heat from the water, melts the ice faster.

This in turn, dumps more water into the ocean. Even though salt water is more dense than pure water in ice, the water still has to end up somewhere right?

This dumping of water, increases the sea levels. Slowly, but surely it will rise. By 1mm, then 5mm. Then long enough, it becomes 1cm to maybe 3 or 4cm.

Imagine sea levels to rise to the length of your handphone, or maybe your wallet.

Next up, just a piece of news.

The glaciers, or caps of ice on the Himalayas, is expected to melt completely by the year 2036. I'd be around 47 years old by then.

Instead of just ice shelves, glaciers also contribute to the rise in sea levels.

Mehh, next up. Tsunamis.

No seriously, its really hard to see a wave so high up formed through natural means. Like maybe 100 feet in the air?

The concept of waves is that each time, the gravity from the moon, pulls the waves up. Then as the moon moves, the gravity "disappears" and the waves come down again.

In a tsunami instead, it is caused by earthquakes or erupting undersea volcanoes.

How?

Imagine yourself placing your hands together under the surface of the water in a tub. Then, you open your hands slowly while maintaining the hands under the surface. You should see the water rushing in to fill in the space you created for about 2 seconds with your hands. The water that fills in clashes with water coming in from the other side, creating a big ripple.

On the tub, it looks like a small ripple. On Earth, that ripple is worth about 5 storeys high.

Another scenario.

In an earthquake, the crusts can slip beside each other, or one side of the crust can rise while the other goes downwards. Now, imagine you have a hand underneath the water in a tub. Raise your hand slowly up to the surface and you can see a small gush of water coming upwards to the surface. This is called water displacement. The water gushing upwards is displaced to the surrounding areas where the crusts are at the same level instead of the crust that has risen due to the earthquake.

Due to water displacement, the excess amount of water will travel to cover up the other areas of water that are not on the same water level. Upon travelling, the speed of the water travelling creates waves. The further it travels, the bigger the wave. Water is taken in to flow with the wave. Which is why you have your receding shoreline minutes before the big wave crashes.

Undersea volcanoes work the same way to cause tsunamis. Volcanoes erupt sometimes due to water that enter the volcanic lava within a volcano.

What happens when water boils?

Bubbles and steam are created, which rises and brings up lava. The amount of steam and bubbles creates the eruptions.

In an earthquake, the eruptions somewhat create a displacement of the water in the ocean due to the eruption from the volcano.

Pretty cool?

Dunno about you guys, but its interesting to me.

I'm tired anyways. I'll continue about the outer space part sometime soon.

Nights!