Geography: Books & Streaming Videos

Alfred Wegener and his persistence in developing evidence for Continental Drift illustrates the importance of scientific inquiry in challenging existing theories. This video presents the main evidence for Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis and describes the reaction of the scientific establishment to his work.

So, what is geography? In our first episode of Crash Course Geography, we will endeavor to answer this seemingly simple question with the help of a similarly simple factoid: that the US imports more than 3 billion pounds of bananas from Guatemala each year. But as it turns out, beneath the kinds of factoids we usually associate with Geography are much grander stories that really are Geography. So let's go a little bananas as we explore the sordid history of the Chiquita banana.

Traditionally, geography is studied as two interconnected parts: physical geography and human geography. For the first half of this series, we will be focusing on physical geography, which is all about recognizing the characteristics of the environment and the processes that create, modify, and destroy those environments.

Today, we're going to talk about how the Earth moves, but to do that, we're going to have to go way back to the early days of the galaxy! Processes that happened before the Earth even formed have led us to the geographic patterns and processes that create Earth's environments and support all living things. We'll talk about how the Earth rotates, the effects of it being slightly tilted, how events like sea ice melting impact how the Earth wobbles, and of course talk about how our elliptical orbit gives us seasons. So many of our life decisions are influenced by the motion of Earth. It guides where we decide to live, what food we eat, or even what weather we experience - which we'll talk about more next time.

From navigating a cross-country road trip (or just finding the nearest coffee shop), to analyzing election results (or the latest meme on K-pop group popularity), maps play a huge role in how we interpret the world! Today, we're going to talk about the differences between reference maps and thematic maps, take a closer look at how projections play a part in how we perceive maps, and discuss the role of the cartographer (or map maker) in all of this. Maps are incredibly powerful tools and play a crucial role in how we understand the world, but they are also made by people, so it is our job to think critically about how these stories are being presented to us.

Much like a cell membrane, our atmosphere forms a protective boundary between outer space and the biosphere that allows for all life to exist on Earth's surface. Today, we're going to talk about its composition and layers (the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere), follow the path of a sunbeam of light as it travels through space and (potentially) reaches Earth's surface, and discuss how the greenhouse effect can be both a good and bad thing!