Dogaru Andreea-Ioana

Grupa:102
Geografie

Unit 11 Assignment

A.1. Answer the following questions on the text:

1) What is water?
For a brew that’s colourless, tasteless, odorless, and calorie free, water packs a punch. It is the
only substance necessary to all life; many organisms can live without oxygen, but none can live
without water.
2) Why does the text describe as being closest to a universal solvent?
It comes closest to being the universal solvent; while you drink from a tumbler, the water is
busily dissolving molecules from your glass.
3) How much of the quantity of precipitation falling each day in the US is used?
Four trillion gallons of precipitation falls on the United States each day,
4) What is the cycle of water?
Each day the sun evaporates a trillion tons of water from the oceans and continents and pumps it
as vapour into the atmosphere - the greatest physical force at work on earth. Each day the same
amount of vapour condenses and falls as rain, snow, sleet, and hail, replenishing its sources. All
of this is the cycle of water
5) What are the challenges faced by the rain-rich East of the United States?
The rain-rich East faces water challenges equally severe, some of quantity and more of quality.
6) What will Boston, New York and Washington D.C. face if nature repeats the
drought that struck in the 1960s?
The immense populations of metropolitan Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., will face
rationing if nature repeats the drought that struck in the 1960s.
7) What have US authorities done in order to manage water?
US authorities built two million dams, irrigated sixty million acres, carved barge canals that
carry a fifth of intercity freight, created 50.000 public and private water utilities, drained a
hundred million acres of wetlands, and drilled millions of wells.
8) Give examples of bizarre and extraordinary situations.
- Texans have pumped so much water from the ground beneath Houston – a process partially
stabilized - that the city has subsided several feet and some homes have been abandoned to
invading seawater from Galveston Bay.
- The Chicago River runs backward, its flow reversed to carry Chicago sewage away from Lake
Michigan.

B.1. Match the following words from the text to their definitions on the right and fill in the
grid at the end of the exercise:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
g k i n a d h b e l o m c j f