This earth of ours : the weather

Title

Language

English

Year

1937

Subject

Earth (Planet)

Weather.

Climatology.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Behavior of the earth is usually spoken of as the weather. When speaking of the weather in a general way which is found in an entire country, the word climate is used.

Fulltext

BB THE YOUNG CITIZEN January, 1937 THIS EARTH OF OURS THE WEATHER Find out how our earth behaves. Do you notice that sometimes you are good and pleasant but sometimes you are' cross and naughty? In the same way, the earth is sometimes sunny while at other times it is cloudy or stormy. This behavior of the earth is usually spoken of as the weather. When it is calm and neither too warm nor too cold. we say that. the weather is fine. When it i~ rainy or stormy, we say that the weather is bad. When speaking of the weather in a l!:er.cral way which is f<;>und in an entire country. the word climate is used. We say that the climate in northern Russia is cold and that in central Africa hot. When we read a story or look at a movie, chcn· are people who take different part~ in the st0ry. These persons are called characters. In the story of weather, there are certain characters each playing .1 ~ifferent part. There are at least four important characters in the weather movie. They are the sun, earth. air, and water. Dust is a less important character. The sun gives the earth all the heat it needs. The sun's rays have. the greatest power when they arc directly over a certain point. The heat at such time goes farther into the earth and then thrown off again into the air with great intensity. When the rays of the sun strike the earth slantingly. th<'y have much less force. ANT WAYS (Con11nued From the December issue) You read in last month's article that ants live. in very big families called colonies. A colony, composed of thousands of individuals, lives in a nest. T he nest is built in light soil just below the surface of the ground. It consists of many little cooms connected by a network of tunnels, which are just like the corridors of a large building. · A community is founded by a queen that is about to lay eggs. As soon as sh~ decides to make her home, she takes off her wings. She fears that, with wings, she might be tempted to leave the nest. Rid of her wings, she shuts herself up in a little chamber, meanwhile the eggs in her body are ripening. After some weeks of rest, she lays. a small clutch of eggs. When the eggs hatch into grubs. she feeds them with her saliva. Because of lack of nourishment. thes~ grubs develop slowly into small worker ants. For about seven months. the· queen takes no food herself and feeds the first brood from her own body. As soon as the workers are ready to work they creep out of the nest and gather food for the queen. It is now her time to rest and live as a true queen. The little workers enlargE> the nest by building new chambers and digging new tunnels. T hey also attend to all the needs of the queen. The queen now does nothing but lay eggs. When resting, she is petted by the workers and lickeci by them with their feelers. When she takes a walk in the galleries. she is escorted by her subjects. As she walks. sht- lays her tiny white ~ggs. The· workers The work of the sun is affected by the earth itself. The earth is not always thz same at different times and ·at different places. The shape of the earth, its movements around the sun, and the differences in elevations of its surface all cause differences in climate in different parts of the earth.

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