Thursday 22 February 2007

What's life like at -46oC?

That's the current temperature in Oymyakon in Russia, which is the coldest inhabited place on earth...


Year 13 have been reading today about geographer Nick Middleton's journey to Oymyakon, which was part of a project to visit the hottest, coldest, wettest and driest places on earth. He's written about his adventures in an excellent book called Going to Extremes.

Whilst I was looking for information about the weather at the moment in Oymyakon, I found this interview with Nick, from the National Geographic...


The Oymyakon Project's website is also an interesting read, with some great pictures... Including this one - of Oymyakon's airport!


How would you fancy living in a climate like this? What problems would you have to overcome? What advantages of living in a (very) cold climate can you think of? Leave a comment...

5 comments:

Mrs K said...

From "The village that got too old" to "The village that got too cold"...

Have to say, I don't fancy it. I'm sitting at the desk, warming my feet against the radiator. And we're probably in double figures.

Miss Ellis said...

That did cross my mind as a title for the post, but I'd already written it...

I don't think I'd be too keen - although you wouldn't have to do any marking because the ink in your pen would be frozen!

Mrs K said...

No marking!!! Yeah!

Alas, we are in sunny UK ... (!)

Anyway, I have found another site that might be of interest to your pupils (and yourself). It's CAFOD's Big Deal Homework Helper. Looks quite useful - and nice to see the clear links between RE and Geography!

Alan Parkinson said...

Used this video with our 6th formers as there's a temperature inversion which means that the temperature gets warmer as you go up out of the valley where Oymyakon is: if you don't have the video I could probably get a copy for you...
http://www.geographypages.co.uk/a2peri.htm

Miss Ellis said...

Thanks Alan. I've used the chapter from the book with A Level students in the past, but managed to get a copy of the whole series from the film company this year. They particularly liked the Walrus Club bit!!