TEN LONGEST RIVERS

Amazon River
Sorry this blog was not on time, but I was out of town and I did not have a good internet connection. Hopefully I will have the blog for Friday up this FridayMost everyone I talked to about this post could name the first four rivers in this list, but no one could name the last six. I am not sure I can even pronounce some of these. I did some research and calculations and found out that the circumference of the earth is 24,902 miles. The total length of the top ten rivers is 32832 miles. So then, you could have a continuious river all the way around the earth and about 30% more with just the ten longest rivers. I thought that was quite interesting. Well, here is the list of the top ten longest rivers in the world. I will leave the pronunciation up to you.

Rank	River	Location	Approximate Length—miles
1.	Nile	Africa	4,180
2.	Amazon	South America	3,912
3.	Mississippi-Missouri-Red Rock	United States	3,710
4.	Chang Jiang (Yangtze)	China	3,602
5.	Ob	Russia	3,459
6.	Huang Ho (Yellow)	China	2,900
7.	Yenisei	Russia	2,800
8.	Parana	South America	2,795
9.	Irtish	Russia	2,758
10.	Zaire (Congo)	Congo	2,716

TEN HOTTEST INHABITED PLACES

The reason this blog is late is because it was really hard to find information for it. I looked around everywhere on the internet and could not find what the hottest inhabited countries are. Since I could not find the hottest countries, I tried to find the hottest cities. Still, I could not find any information about it. Finally, I decided that I should just use the atlas. So then, this is the information from the DK Concise Atlas of the World. It lists the 13 hottest inhabited places, but they are only 5 different temperatures, so I decided that I should just list them all. They are in desert-like places, near the equator and, with the exception of Santa Marta Colombia, in Africa and India. I will go ahead and give you the list of the tem hottest inhabited places.

So, there you have it. The ten hottest inhabited cities according to DK's World Atals. That is all I have for now, so I will hopefully be posting on Friday about a new topic!

Jenna

TEN MOST DENSELY POPULATED COUNTRIES

Sorry this blog is a little late, but I got a litle busy last Friday. Anyways, the ten most densely populated countries. I found an interesting quote by Matt Rosenberg on About.com. The quote says that "About 90% of the earth's people live on 10% of the land. Additionally, about 90% of the people live north of the equator." I thought that was very interesting. Another interesting thing that Matt Rosenberg said is that he does not think the microcountries and cities in most of the lists should be included in the list of the ten most densely populated countries. He thinks it should start with Bangladesh (number 7 in the list I have posted on here.) I included the microcountries, but I did not include the cities that some lists included since I am doing the most densely populated countries not cities. Hong Kong, Macau and Gibraltar are some of the cities that are on the list. To see all of them click on the blog title. Well, I am sure you are all very interested in seeing what the countries are, so here you have it.

Rank	Country or Region	Population		Area (km²)	Density (Pop per km²)
1	Monaco	35,253		1.49	23,660
2	Singapore	4,325,539		683	6,333
3	Vatican City	783		0.44	1,780
4	Malta	401,630		316	1,271
5	Maldives	329,198		298	1,105
6	Bahrain	726,617		694	1,047
7	Bangladesh	141,822,300		143,998	985
8	Nauru	13,635		21	649
9	Republic of China (Taiwan)	22,894,384		35,980	636
10	Barbados	269,556		430	627

Here is another interesting tidbit I found in my searching around. It is a map of the world with countries organized by a gradient legend according to population density. I am not sure if it is totally accurate, but it at least gives a good picuture.
So then, most of the most densely populated countries are in the east and they are mostly small countries. I did not say that they were all small, because China and India are definitely not small, but most of them are small countries with a whole lot of people in them. And I mean a whole lot of people. I mean think about it, 23,660 people for every square kilometer. Compare that with the United States' 31 people for every square kilometer. That sounds pretty crowded to me. Compare even the U.S.'s 31 people per sq km with Greenland's 0.026 people per sqare kilometer. In my opinion we should spread out. Instead of having 35,253 people in 1.49 square kilometers in one part of the world and 56,916 people in 2,175,600 square kilometers we could spread out and people could have a lot more space. That just does not make sense to me. Well, those are my observations from researching this blog. I will have some more intersting information for you on Friday!

Jenna

TEN LARGEST LAKES

This blog was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. When I picked it out I thought it would be one of those easy blogs that everyone agrees on. Boy, was I wrong. There are several disputes about which 10 lakes should be in the top ten. I will discuss those after I list the lakes. So, here they are. (Click on the table to view it larger.)
The reason I listed 11 lakes here instead of 10 is because of those disputes I mentioned earlier. The first dispute I encountered involved Lake Huron and Lake Michigan (#4 and #5). On one website I found them listed together and at the #2 slot. There was a footnote about it and said that was because they form one hydrological unit. On most of the other sites I looked at though, they were listed separately, so I listed them separately. The second dispute I encountered was with the Aral Sea and Lake Chad. They were on most of the lists I found, but after doing a little research I found out that they have been shrinking a lot in recent years, so they technically should not be on the list anymore. The Aral's shrinkage was due to the diversion of some of the rivers that supplied the Aral Sea. Lake Chad's shrinkage was due to climate change and increased demands on the lakes resources. Those were the main disputes I found between the different lists of the largest lakes. Well, that is it for now. I will post another blog next week!

Jenna

TEN COUNTRIES WITH THE LOWEST LIFE EXPECTANCY

This weeks reasearch was very interesting. When I first picked the topic for this week, I thought that all of the countries were most likely in Africa. Sure enough, I was right. In fact most of the bottom 30 or 35 countries with the lowest life expectancy are all in Africa. Their life expectancies range from about 32 to 52. Whereas the people in the country with the highest life expectancy, see my previous blog, are expected to live 83 years! That's more than double the life expectancy for any of the bottom ten coutries. Also, I found that the average life expectancy of the world is 68.1 years. The three countries with the lowest life expectancy are expected to live to almost half that. Wow. This blog was eye-opening. I guess I will go ahead and give you the list of the ten countries with the lowest life expectancy. Drumroll please...

1. Swaziland-32.62
2. Botswana-33.74
3. Lesotho-34.40
4. Angola-38.62
5. Zimbabwe-39.29
6. Liberia-39.65
7. Mozambique-39.82
8. Zambia-40.03
9. Sierra leone-40.22
10. Malawi-41.70

I thought I would give some applications to this blog instead of leaving you hanging on a minor chord. I read somewhere that one of the main causes for the low life expectancies in all of Africa is HIV/AIDS. There are some simple ways you can help Africa. Maybe even raise these countries life expectancies! Here is a list of few organizations I know of, and I am sure there are tons more out there. The ONE Campaign, Blood:Water mission, DATA, Project (RED), Heifer International, and Keep A Child Alive. There are plenty more links on The ONE Campaigns website. So, that is my conclusion for this week. I will be posting again soon, so check back for some more interesting information!

Jenna