Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Eric

On a blazing sunny afternoon, our geography teacher, Ms Chee, invited us, the Queenstown geographers to a 'hot' date at Labrador Park. At first, i thought it would turned out to be a boring and no value-added trip as geography, in my opinion should be a dull and dead subject. During the trip, my understanding on geography started to change as we went past the Aerial Tower, the Jetty, the Promenade and the Dragon Teeth Gate.

At the first station, the Aerial Tower, we were exposed to the tropical rainforest. As we walked down the stairs from the top of the tower to the bottom, i saw some protecting features used to protect the rainforest. For example, concretes and netting equipments were used to protect the soil from eroding. Points from the notes are confirmed to be true as i have witnessed the downward pointing drip tip and the broad surface of the leave, found in my natural vegetation's notes. At the bottom of the rainforest, there were the buttress roots used to anchor the trees firmly on the ground. We were also made to sketch the structure of the rainforest. Through this activity, it allowed me to have a better understanding of the five distinct structures. Namely the Emergent, the Canopy, the understorey, the shrub and the ground layers.

Next, we moved on to the Jetty. At the Jetty, we were to carry out a simple activity to recap on the chapter on coastal studies. We were made to count the wave period, which is the numbers of breaking waves per minute. The results that we had were between 13-15 which is a spilling wave. We also discovered an erosional feature that is formed when eroded by waves. The feature was a notch. Through the help of the notes, i know that further erosion of the notch will result in a cave, then a cliff found nearly perpendicular to a wave-cut platform. We were also asked to sketch out the coastline of the beach which further more helped me to know more about headland and bay.

As we were on our way to our next stop, the Promenade, we saw a lot of protecting features that were used to protect the coast from eroding away. One of the main features we saw was the seawall. Seawalls were used to protect the coast from strong waves which were commonly experienced near the coast of the Labrador Park. There are also many other protecting features such as breakwaters and groynes. At the Promenade, we were asked to carry out the same activity at the Jetty which was to count the wave period. The results that we found were the same at the Jetty. In other words, both places experienced the same waves.

Lastly, when we were at the Dragon Teeth Gate, weathering was put to use here as we learnt how it can shape different types of rocks. One type of the rocks we saw was weathered by oxidation. We knew because it had turned red which means iron which presenced in the rock chemically reacted with the oxygen found in the air.

My conclusion for this trip is that, despite the fact that the sun was a test to us, we still managed to complete the trip and used three of the geography subjects, Natural Vegtation, Coastal Studies and Weathering. I believed that from that day onwards, i will not despise geography field trip anymore and i will definitely appreciate it.

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