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PLACE
What is a place? How
do you define it?
A place is where
people live. Places like this include houses and apartment
buildings, cities and towns, countries and
continents. Each
level is a larger collection of places. Continents have countries.
Countries have cities and towns. Cities and towns have houses and
apartment buildings. When you are talking with someone who doesn't
live where you live, you might say, "I live in a yellow house" or "I
live in Cairo." When you meet someone who lives far away, she might
say, "I live in Pakistan" or "I live in Europe." The yellow house,
Cairo, Pakistan, and Europe are all places because they are where
people live.
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They are also places because they are where things are.
Cairo is
where the capital of Egypt is. Pakistan is where the world’s
second highest peak
‘K2’
is. Europe is where England is.
In the same way, a
park is a place where trees and ducks are, and a market is where
food is. You could say that a fire station is a place where the
fire engines are. You could also say that a fire station is a
place where fire-fighters work. |
K2, in Northern
Pakistan |
So far, we have
defined a
place
as where things are or where people live or
work. Going back to our park example, we could say that a park is a
place where people are, too. These people are not working (unless
they are working in the park). They are enjoying some time away from
work. They might even be feeding ducks. So, a place can be somewhere
that people aren't living or working but just are there.
Egypt is a place
where the Pyramids are. The
Pyramids
are a man-made thing. A
place can also be a nature-made thing. An example is America's
Grand
Canyon,
which is both a thing and a place. Another example is
Mount Everest.
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Mount
Everest—Nepal |
Pyramid—Egypt
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Grand Canyon—USA
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The Grand Canyon is a
very deep rift surrounded by tall cliffs. Mount Everest is the
highest mountain on Earth. Because the Grand Canyon and Mount
Everest are so different from their surroundings, we give them
special names and call them places.
How do we tell one
place from another? With Mount Everest, it's easy. It's the tallest
mountain on Earth, so everyplace else is a different place. Anything
that is not part of Mount Everest is a different place. In a sense,
the mountain itself is its own boundary.
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A
boundary is a line,
visible or invisible, that marks the outer edge of something.
When you play soccer or baseball or basketball, you have
out-of-bounds lines that some people call boundary lines. The
playing field is inside the boundary lines. The soccer field or
baseball field is a place because it has boundaries. The same
can be said for cities and
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Map of Egypt
countries
and continents. The city of Cairo has boundaries that the
Egyptian people have set up. If you start in Cairo and travel
over the boundary line, you have travelled to another place. Thesame
is true
for
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Pakistan and Europe.
Cross the boundary line and you're in another place.
Questions:
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What is a place?
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What is
K2?
Where is it located?
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Where are Pyramids
located?
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Where
is
Mount
Everest? And what
is it famous for?
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What is
Grand
Canyon and what
is its location?
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What is meant by a
boundary?
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 The
place is a basic unit of study for geography. Geographers compare
places or tell how to get from place to place or measure coordinates
of places (like latitude and
longitude).
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