Yesterday, we started studying about a fascinating case study on the ‘River Nile’. I like to call it ‘Mission: Nile’, because of the word ‘case’ in ‘case study’ reminds me of detectives work. Which means that we are detectives in ‘Mission: Nile’ researching for clues and facts. And that is what I have done in the Internet.

Okay, let’s start with the positive impacts. After going through all the positive impacts, Chrystal came up with a question that was really quite mind blogging, and needed some research to find clues for the answer in the ‘crime scene’- the Internet. The question is ‘How do water theme parks waste water?’ Well, after research, I decided to use one water theme park- The Waveyard.

According to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21897687/, The Waveyard uses 50 million gallons of water at first to fill its artificial oceans and rivers. Replenishing water lost to evaporation and spillage requires another 60 to 100 million gallons per year, enough to support about 1,200 people in the Phoenix area. That is a lot. A LOT. The Phoenix area is the sixth most populated city in the United States, having 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data. Most of all, it is a desert. That is really using water for our own enjoyment but not thinking of the people. For your information, they opened in 2010. You can visit their website, http://www.waveyard.com/.

Another thing that came up during class was about white water rafting. Nobody knew how white water rafting really felt except for Nicole and Ms J, and you’ll never know until you watch this video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B66vSNnsaw

Now about the River Nile. More interesting clues taken from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/nile-river-facts.html!
· The Nile originates in Burundi, which is located South of the Equator and then flows across Northeastern Africa, finally crossing Egypt and then drains into the Mediterranean Sea.
· It is one of the longest rivers in the world; it used to be the longest but recent studies suggest that Amazon River can be longer than Nile. The length of the river is approximately 6695 km and the river has two tributaries.
· Only 22% of the river passes through Egypt, the other countries through which Nile passes are Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Zaire, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania.
· The cities that Nile flows past are Cairo, Khartoum, Gondokoro, Aswan, Karnak, Thebes and the town of Alexandria.
· River Nile has two tributaries namely the Blue Nile and the White Nile; the volume of water of Nile is mostly determined by the Blue Nile, which contributes more than 50% of the water of the Nile River but then fertility wise, both the tributaries contribute considerably. In fact White Nile is called so because it appears white due to the presence of silt. White Nile originates at Lake Victoria and then the Blue Nile, which originates at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, joins in Sudan and proceeds northwards.
· The source of the river is debatable since it is commonly known that the source of the river is Lake Victoria, which is the biggest lake in Africa, but it is observed that on the northern side of the lake there is a waterfall called Ripon Falls, which has a small opening and seemingly that is where the water in the River Nile comes from but then this cannot be held as the ultimate truth since there are many rivers that flow into Lake Victoria therefore which one of these or if all of them are the sources of The Nile. Presently River Kagera and its tributary, which is called Ruvubu whose headwaters are in Burundi, are considered to be the source of the River Nile.
· Nile also played an important in the building if the famous Pyramids since the blocks of stone, which were used to make these pyramids, were actually transported from the source to the site with the help of Nile.
One of the positive impacts of rivers is transportation. The last point proves that rivers aren’t just used to transport humans from one place to another. They are also used to transport things for humans. Another example is using rivers to transport tree trunks from one place along a river to another place.

Well, I suppose that wasn’t a bad start to ‘Mission: Nile’!