Joy to the Whirled Trivia Quiz

Answer: Norway

The world's strongest whirlpool is the Saltstraumen in Bodø, Norway. A second giant maelstrom is the Moskstraumen, also off the coast of northern Norway. The Moskstraumen is unique in that it occurs in a natural channel between the coast and the open sea, rather than at the entrance to a bay or strait.

It is the Moskstraumen that is seen on the Carta Marina and that caught the imaginations of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne. In the image on the map and in a popular illustration for Poe's story "Descent into the Maelstrom" the giant whirlpool looks like a deep funnel and is frightening indeed.

The word "maelstrom" comes from Dutch words that combine to mean "grinding stream" or "crushing current" because the noise sounded to some witnesses like millstones grinding.

Answer: Sicily

As can be seen in the photograph, Mount Etna is on the east coast of the Italian island of Sicily, near the cities of Catania and Messina. Etna is Europe's most active volcano and has erupted many times in history and prehistory. Depending on where one places the border between Europe and Asia, Mount Etna is either the highest or the second highest volcano in Europe (after Mount Elbrus), and it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013. Sicily is the largest Mediterranean island.

While it is considered part of the nation of Italy, Sicily is an autonomous region granted self government by a special constitutional statute.

Answer: New York and Ontario

The enormous volume of water moving downstream from Niagara Falls into the gorge of the Niagara River creates rapids, but at the point when the river turns almost at right angles, a huge whirlpool is formed, about 1,700 feet (518 meters) long and about 1,200 feet (365 meters) across.

The basin of the whirlpool is around 125 feet (38 meters) deep. There is a "reversal phenomenon" when the water is high enough, which causes the waters to flow underneath the surface in the opposite direction and form into a vortex, and the current may move as quickly as fifty miles an hour. Parks have been set up on both the Canadian and the American sides of the river, and the whirlpool can also be viewed from the bridge and from various tourist conveyances, including a cable car ride.

Answer: Oklahoma

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oklahoma City is the "unofficial Tornado Capital of the United States", and it lies in the middle of what has been termed "Tornado Alley", where conditions are optimal for the formation of the whirling funnel clouds that wreak such destruction.

The central plains region of the continental United States is located where cooler and drier air masses from the Rocky Mountains collide with the humid air from the Gulf of Mexico. Because the land is relatively flat, without major lakes or rivers to modify temperatures, tornadoes have plenty of space in which to form.

While tornadoes can form in many types of terrain, in the United States most strong tornadoes happen in the middle of the North American continent and in the warm "Dixie Alley" of the old South and Florida.

Answer: Utah

Dinosaur National Monument, created in 1915 by President Woodrow Wilson, stretches about 35 miles from east to west along the Green River and Yampa River in Utah and Colorado, covering 210,000 acres. Whirlpool Canyon is on the Green River and is only accessible by boat, white water rafting much as John Wesley Powell did in 1838. Powell wrote about being warned of the "sucks and waterfalls" along the Green River. Trappers had preceded him in the early 1800s, and Native Americans had lived in the area for thousands of years. Petroglyphs, as well as graffiti by trappers can be seen on the rocks above the riverbeds. The Shoshone called the area by a word that means prairie hen, while the Ute called it the Bitterroot. Today, the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation is nearby.

Dinosaur bones were found in the layers of sandstone along the rivers, and visitors to the park can go to the Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry to see around 1,500 dinosaur fossils in the rock, even being allowed to touch some of them. There are also replicas of dinosaurs. Hiking trails, horseback riding, and scenic drives can get those who are brave enough further into the wilderness to see geologic formations.

Answer: Ethiopia

The Kalahari Desert is in southern Africa while Ethiopia is in the northeastern Horn of Africa. Around 70% of the flat, landlocked country of Botswana is made up of the Kalahari Desert. The nation of Namibia contains not only the inland Kalahari Desert but the coastal Namib Desert, with its "Skeleton Coast" along the Atlantic Ocean. Because the Namib is a true desert, Namibia gets the smallest amount of rainfall of any country in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Kalahari, on the other hand, has a variety of environments, including some like the Succulent Karoo, which has a great variety of plants and animals well-adapted to store and use water and nutrients in an arid climate. South Africa has a more varied geography than Botswana or Namibia, with its interior being driest.

The Kalahari has vast areas of red sand and often lives up to the meaning of its name, taken from a Tswana word meaning "the great thirst" or "a waterless place", as in our picture.

Answer: Chile

The image was taken at ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, an international observatory in the South American Republic of Chile. According to the description on Wikimedia Commons, "The photograph was taken on the Chajnantor Plateau, at an altitude of 5000 metres in the Chilean Andes." Chile's high desert is perfect for astronomy because the air is clear and there is little water vapor in the atmosphere above to scatter radio waves.

The land area is wide and flat, about 181,300 square kilometers, and cities are few and far between, so that the array can be set up with no barriers to consider, and equipment can be moved when needed.

The pattern of ocean currents in the Pacific carries moist air away from the Chilean coast, which keeps the climate dry. Of all the geography of Earth, the Atacama Desert is most like Mars, and some experiments of Viking I and 2 were duplicated there, because the soil is similar.

In addition, the southern sky offers much of interest that has not yet been studied.

Answer: Japan

The painting is "Famous Views of the 60 Provinces - 55 Rough Sea at Naruto in Awa Province" by Hiroshige, who lived from 1797-1858. You can see it in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York, USA. But going to Naruto, Japan, to see the real thing through Hiroshige's eyes would be well worth the trip! The whirlpools are formed in a narrow strait between Naruto and Awaji islands.

At high tide, waters flow from the Pacific Ocean into the Inland Sea, requiring a large volume of water to move through a very narrow opening, about 1,340 meters at its narrowest point.

The water moves at a high rate of speed, and the floor of the channel is deep and uneven. Many whirlpools appear, some of them 20 meters across. The Oonaruto Bridge has been built across the strait, and observers can see the whirlpools by looking under the bridge.

As with other whirlpools around the world, adventurous souls can get close by taking a boat.

Answer: Bay of Fundy

The Old Sow may have been given its name because of the sucking and grunting sounds the whirlpool makes, but the word probably came from a mispronunciation of the word "sough" - which could describe a drain or may also refer to a sucking noise. The vortex may reach 250 feet (about 76 meters) in diameter and a steep 12 feet (3.6 meters) in depth when conditions are right, and it often creates smaller "piglets" - whirlpools stirred up by the water's turbulence. Like the large whirlpool in the Niagara River farther west, the Old Sow whirls in the waters between the United States and Canada.

Answer: Scotland

The shape of the sea floor - a steep pinnacle of rock thrusting up from a deep underwater valley between the two islands - and the strong Atlantic currents entering the strait combine in the Gulf of Corryvreckan to create some of the most turbulent waters on Earth, especially when winds and tides combine in a particular way.

The vortex is said to have reached 300 feet (about 90 meters) wide and 100 feet (30 meters) deep. Detailed maps, images, and videos can be seen on the web site Hebridean-Wild.co.uk. George Orwell, who wrote his novel "1984" while living on the island of Jura, had a close call while trying to cross the strait with family members in a small boat.