ответьте на вопросы по текстам:
1.What is diffusion?
2. What physical phenomenon gives out the heat?
3. Why do we need gravity?
4. What special quality does water have?
5. What keeps us alive?
6. What is natural disaster?
7.What is the most hazardous phenomenon in your opinion? Explain why.
8. How do physical and natural phenomena impact on your life? Why?
9. How do people affect nature? Give your examples.
Text 1
Almost everything around us can be attributed to some physical phenomena if you go down deep enough.
There have been some great answers which have talked about friction, pressure, energy conservation etc. I might mention some of those to include some aspects which were not covered in those answers.
1. The direction of Entropy: Entropy always increases. This phenomenon makes so many things possible, that it is impossible to list them here. Diffusion of gases enables us to breathe the oxygen that plants create. Electric current, thermal current, flow of water from higher to lower altitudes are other examples.
2. Nuclear Fusion: The process that powers the sun, which gives out the heat and light required for life to be possible on earth. The plot of The Dark Knight Rises would have been different too, had nuclear fusion not been there.
3. Gravity: The force that keeps us on earth, the force that made the formation of earth possible, the force which holds down the atmosphere which makes it possible for us to breathe
4. The anomalous behavior of water: Water is densest at 4 deg C. This is the reason that lakes and other water bodies freeze over only at the surface during the winter, thus providing an insulating cover to the rest of the water body. As a result, water organisms don't freeze to death. Since life began in water before it crept out onto land, who knows whether or not that particular strain of bacteria which was to evolve into you would have survived or not
5. Capillary Action: The motion of fluids through small tubes is what keeps us alive. Fluid = blood, tube = veins and arteries.
6. Newton's third law: Enables us to sit on a chair without it squashing down, enables us to walk by applying a backward force on the ground, enables us to crack jokes about every action having an equal and opposite reaction.
There are many more. If you think about it, everything around you works thanks to some physical phenomena or the other. These were just the ones I could think of, looking around me and contemplating on the fragility of life.
Text 2
Notwithstanding the term "natural," a natural hazard has an element of human involvement. A physical event, such as a volcanic eruption, that does not affect human beings is a natural phenomenon but not a natural hazard. A natural phenomenon that occurs in a populated area is a hazardous event. A hazardous event that causes unacceptably large numbers of fatalities and/or overwhelming property damage is a natural disaster. In areas where there are no human interests, natural phenomena do not constitute hazards nor do they result in disasters. This definition is thus at odds with the perception of natural hazards as unavoidable havoc wreaked by the unrestrained forces of nature. It shifts the burden of cause from purely natural processes to the concurrent presence of human activities and natural events.
Although humans can do little or nothing to change the incidence or intensity of most natural phenomena, they have an important role to play in ensuring that natural events are not converted into disasters by their own actions. It is important to understand that human intervention can increase the frequency and severity of natural hazards. For example, when the toe of a landslide is removed to make room for a settlement, the earth can move again and bury the settlement. Human intervention may also cause natural hazards where none existed before. Volcanoes erupt periodically, but it is not until the rich soils formed on their ejects are occupied by farms and human settlements that they are considered hazardous. Finally, human intervention reduces the mitigating effect of natural ecosystems. Destruction of coral reefs, which removes the shore's first line of defense against ocean currents and storm surges, is a clear example of an intervention that diminishes the ability of an ecosystem to protect itself. An extreme case of destructive human intervention into an ecosystem is desertification, which, by its very definition, is a human-induced "natural" hazard.
POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS NATURAL PHENOMENA
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