Author Archives: Cris

Lantana

By | |
Leave a comment
Lantana

Nasty and nice!

  • Lantana is a perennial shrub consisting of approximately 150 species.
  • Lantana belongs to the verbena family, ‘Verbenaceae’ and range in size from 50 cm (1.6 ft) to 2 metres (6.6 ft) tall.
  • The flowers of the Lantana are in small clusters, and can be yellow, orange, red, pink, purple and white or a mixture of these.
  • Lantana blooms most or all of  the year depending on the plant species and the weather.
  • The fruits of Lantana are black with one seed and are prized by birds, which is one of the major causes of the spread of the plant.

Lantana, White, Flowers, Weed, Queensland. Australia, Ten Random Facts, Many

  • Lantana was introduced to Australia before the 1850s, and has become one of its major pests.
  • The leaves from Lantana are poisonous to most animals.
  • In Australia, lantana covers millions of hectares of pasture, natural bushland and  forests.
  • Lantana flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies , and some types of weaver birds use them to decorate their nests.
  • Lantana is native to the tropical regions of North and South America and Africa.
Bibliography:
Lantana n.d, Weeds Australia, <http://www.weeds.org.au/cgi-bin/weedident.cgi?tpl=plant.tpl&ibra=all&card=S03>

Mount Fuji

By | |
Leave a comment
Mount Fuji

It is tall, large and snowy.

  • Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano – a volcano that is tall and conical, made up of many layers of ash, lava, and other rock.
  • Mount Fuji is located on the island of Honshu, the largest Japanese island.
  • Mount Fuji is 3, 776.24 meters (12, 389 feet) in height and is the tallest mountain in Japan.
  • Ancient samurai (Japanese warriors) trained at the bottom of Mount Fuji.
  • The temperatures at the summit of Mount Fuji range from -38°C to 17.8°C, -38°C being the lowest temperature recorded and 17.8°C being the highest.

 

Mount Fuji, Japan, Stratovolcano, Autumn, Honshu Island, Free Digital Photos, Ten Random Facts

Mount Fuji
Image courtesy of John Kasawa/Free Digital Photos
  • In 2009, around 300,000 people climbed Mount Fuji.
  • Scientists believe that Mt Fuji is likely to erupt in the not so distant future due to the build up of pressure in the magma chamber resulting from the major 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
  • Mount Fuji  erupted last on 16th December, 1704 through to January 1, 1705.
  • There are eight peaks surrounding Mount Fuji’s crater all of which can be accessed by climbers.
  • Paragliding is a popular sport on Mount Fuji.
Bibliography:
Mount Fuji 10 January 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Fuji>

Asteroid

By | |
Leave a comment
Asteroid

Zooms along the galaxy…

  • Asteroids are gathered rock and metal that orbits around the sun.
  • Asteroids can range from 10 meters (33 miles) to 1000 kilometres in length.
  • Asteroids that have the length 100 meters (328 feet) have a rotation of over 2.2 hours.
  • Newly discovered asteroids are named by the year, the semi-month and the sequence of the semi-month it was discovered.
  • The first asteroid to be discovered was ‘Cerus’ in 1801.
 Asteroid, Ida, Dactyl, Moon, Satelite, NSSDC Nasa, Galileos, 28 August 1993Ida
Photo courtesy of NASA – NSSDC (Broken Link)
  • Asteroids are formed by gravity pulling rocks and metal towards it and are mostly an irregular shape.
  • The asteroid ‘951 Gaspin’ was the first asteroid to have a close up picture of it taken.
  • Asteroids were originally thought to be stars, until space exploration was issued.
  • In, 1993 the asteroid Ida, 31 kilometres (19 miles) in width, was the first asteroid discovered to have its own moon, about two kilometres (one mile wide), and was named Dactyl.
  • All the known asteroids put together aren’t heavy enough to way the same as earth’s moon.
Bibliography:
Asteroid 7 January 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid>

Cruise Ship

By | |
Leave a comment
Cruise Ship

Also known as a cruise liner, not an ocean liner.

  • Cruise ships are passenger ships that are used for holiday cruises and are a lot like hotels with numerous facilities including pools, restaurants, live entertainment and so on.
  • Cruise ships cost over 500 million dollars to build.
  • Although similar, ocean liners and cruise ships have a few differences. These include that ocean liners aren’t as comfortable and aren’t as suitable for cruising.
  • Cruise ships generally take passengers from a starting point and do a round trip visiting various ports and finish back at the starting point, unlike ocean liners which normally take people directly from one destination to another.
  • Currently, the largest cruise ships are the Royal Caribbean International’s Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas both of which can carry more than 6000 passengers.

Cruise Ship, Liner, Ocean Dream, Pacific Star, Vanuatu, Australia, Queensland, P&O Cruises Australia, Ten Random Facts, 2006

  • The largest cruise ship, Allure of the Seas, is 361.8 m (1,187 feet) in length, 65 meters (208 feet) in width, and approximately 20 storeys high.
  • The first cruise was believed to be performed by the Augusta Victoria on the 22nd January 1891, for two months and 241 passengers.
  •  The first cruise liner built especially as a cruise ship was the Prinzessin Victoria Luise, from Germany which was finished in 1900.
  • Many cruise ships have guns to protect the ship and passengers from modern day pirates.
  • Between 2005 and the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster (not inclusive) only 16 fatalities have occurred amongst 100 million people who have cruised during that time.
Bibliography:
Cruise Ship 5 January 2013, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_ship>

Lolipop

By | |
Leave a comment
Lolipop

Suck, lick… delicious candy.

  • Lollipops are hard, flavoured sugar and corn syrup confectionery on a stick.
  • Lollipops are also known as suckers or sticky pops.
  • Lollipops are available in many sizes, shapes, colours and flavours like bubblegum and rainbow.
  • Lollipops are typically eaten at room temperature.
  • Certain lollipops have been made for those who are on a diet, said to help with weight loss.

Lollipop, Rainbow, Circular, Sphere, Green, Yellow, White, The Rocky Rock Candy Co, 30 grams, Ten Random Facts

  • Some lollipops contain medicine, mainly for children.
  • Early lollipops were made in the Middle Ages, which essentially was boiled sugar on a stick, or with handles.
  • Although there have been several suggestions of different modern lollipop inventors between 1800-1910, George Smith is said to be the first lollipop inventor, inventing the modern lollipop in 1908, and trademarked the name in 1931.
  • George Smith named the lollipop after a popular racing horse at the time, Lolly Pop.
  • George Smith originally implemented the lollipop to be soft candy instead of hard.
Bibliography:
Lollipop 14 December 2012, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollipop>

Geocaching

By | |
2 Comments
Geocaching

Geocaching… a worldwide treasure hunt.

  • Geocaching is when you navigate to a particular location using a GPS to find a box or container called a geocache, hidden at a particular set of coordinates.
  • Geocaches are found all over the world and are generally placed in interesting locations by people who love to geocache.
  • The game of geocaching is free to play and the basic rules of geocaching are:  if you take something out of a geocache, put something in; sign the logbook of the geocache; and log your caching experience at the official Geocaching website.
  • The word ‘geocache’ comes from the prefix ‘geo-‘, meaning Earth, and the french word ‘cache’ meaning hidden location and was first used by Matt Stum on 30th May 2000.
  • The sport of geocaching was created by Dave Ulmer on May the 3rd, 2000 due to new GPS technology that had become available the day before.

Geocache, Geocaching, Lunchbox, Container, camo, BikeNFind's Sea Turtle, Travel Bug, Note, Log Book, Dice, Pencil Sharpener, Tailand, Asia, Phuket Town Park, Traditional, GC227BB, Ten Random Facts

  • There are over a dozen categories of geocaches including Traditional Caches, Multi-Caches, Mystery Caches, Letterbox Hybrids, Wherigo™ Caches, Event Caches, Mega-Event Caches, CITO Event Caches and EarthCaches™.
  • There are approximately 2 million current caches worldwide and over 5 million geocachers.
  • The sizes of geocache containers range from as little as 5ml to more than 20 litres and can take the shape of a lunch box container to a fake rock to a teeny tiny box.  They contain a logbook or log sheet, and sometimes small swaps, like coins, toys and stickers.
  • Non-collectible items can be found in geocaches. These are called travel bugs and geocoins and are trackable via the geoacaching website, and are moved from cache to cache by geocachers.
  • Jeremy Irish, an enthusiastic cacher, created the geocaching.com site which became the official website for geocaching on September the 2nd, 2000.
Bibliography:
Geocaching 101 2013, Geocaching, <http://www.geocaching.com/>
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...