Tag: geography

Human Migration over the last 125,000 years

Video by Tobais Friedrich out of the University of Hawaii. It’s based on a recent paper that suggests that the large fluctuations in climate over the last 120,000 years opened and closed green corridors that allowed multiple pulses of migration out of Africa.

He has some other excellent earth science scientific visualizations.

Intelligence Squared: The Killer Apps of Western Civilization

Naill Ferguson gives a provocative talk about his thesis that there are six “Killer Apps” that made western civilization so successful over the last five centuries.

The killer apps he suggests are:

  • Political and economic competition
  • The scientific method
  • Property rights (linked to voting)
  • Modern Medicine
  • Consumer based economies
  • Protestant work ethic

There’s a PBS series about it as well.

The Intelligence2 podcast, recommended by Mr. Schmidt, is a great resource for talks like this one. They have a nice archive.

Imagining Geography

Making the figurative a little more literal: using the soccer field as a map.

One of the games Dr. A. plays with the middle school geography class is to have them use the soccer field as a large map. They chose a place and someone runs to its location on the field. What I like is that he insists that the map be all in their heads. They might have one or two control points, but they have to visualize the map mentally.

I saw them out on the soccer field today, and I thought I’d make their imaginary map a little more literal in Gimp.

UPDATE: Dr. A[ustin] clarifies the rules of the competitive game they were playing in the comments below, in case anyone wants to try it.

Update 2: Move your mouse over the image below to see the picture with or without the map (larger version here).

Shaded Relief Maps

Shaded relief of Australia from the Shaded Relief Archive.

The Shaded Relief Archive is a great source of continental scale shaded relief maps. Dr. A. used them when the middle-schoolers built their 3d models of Australia and Antarctica for geography.

Australia: Under Construction.

NASA’s Earth Observatory is another great source.

Australia topography from NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Building Physical Models of Geography

Australia: Under Construction.

Dr. Austin has the middle school students build physical models of the continents as an exercise in geography. They use some type of cellulose clay to shape the topography then paint on or apply other icons to represent other types of spatial data; one group, for example, used sparkles to represent population.

The final models are nice for trying stop-motion fly-throughs.