Scientific definition (stream, function, scientist)

[banger]

Does anyone know the actual definition of the word "river".

Each year I travel the western U.S. and have frequently crossed over dry beds identified as this river or that river.

Back east, the width of the crossing would barely have been called a "brook" or a "stream", (even if they had contained flowing water.

To be fair, many of the features that we call mountains, do not make the actual definition.

T.I.A.

[jtur88]

When you sort that out, try your luck with a definition for "peninsula", and try to guess which features around the world qualify for that.

All of eastern north America is a peninsula, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chicago River/Great Lakes/St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The isthmus is only a few miles across, and is cut through by a canal between the Chicago and Illinois Rivers. So digging that canal created a manmade island encompassing the eastern third of the USA and a part of Canada.

I once saw a Geography Trivia book, that asked what is the world's largest Peninsula, and gave Arabia as the correct answer. However, if you look at Western Europe, the isthmus across from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea is a narrower isthmus than Aqaba/Kuwait, and the land mass of western Europe is larger than Arabia. So Western Europe beats Arabia, as a larger peninsula connected by a narrower isthmus, with proper salt water seas all the way around.

Wait---isn't South America a peninsula?

And then use fractal theory to calculate the length of a coastline.

They try to guess how big a pothole has to be, to qualify as one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes.

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by jtur88

When you sort that out, try your luck with a definition for "peninsula", and try to guess which features around the world qualify for that.

All of eastern north America is a peninsula, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chicago River/Great Lakes/St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. The isthmus is only a few miles across, and is cut through by a canal between the Chicago and Illinois Rivers. So digging that canal created a manmade island encompassing the eastern third of the USA and a part of Canada.

I once saw a Geography Trivia book, that asked what is the world's largest Peninsula, and gave Arabia as the correct answer. However, if you look at Western Europe, the isthmus across from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea is a narrower isthmus than Aqaba/Kuwait, and the land mass of western Europe is larger than Arabia. So Western Europe beats Arabia, as a larger peninsula connected by a narrower isthmus, with proper salt water seas all the way around.

Wait---isn't South America a peninsula?

And then use fractal theory to calculate the length of a coastline.

They try to guess how big a pothole has to be, to qualify as one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes.

LMAO! Not very big.

[Tek_Freek]

And while we're defining river let's consider rivulet as well.

Fractals for the length of a coastline. You are one cruel dude!

[jtur88]

By the way, back to your western dry riverbeds. Within the geographic class of "rivers" would be the subset "intermittent rivers", which in many parts of the world, encompasses all of them. Cartographers usually represent them with dotted lines.

They are just as surely rivers as any other, since the serve the function of a permanent waterway for drainage of a highland. It is simply that there is, every year, for part of the year, no water to be drained.

The study of geography requires an understanding that all the globe's surface is not subservient to the temperate summer/winter climatic cycle that we are so familiar with in the American Midwest.

[Tek_Freek]

In my brothers part of the country they are called arroyos and you do NOT want to drive through them after a rain.

[Retroit]

People that name things are not always scientists.