Water, Water Everywhere Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pacific Ocean

The Ring of Fire gets its name from the many active volcanoes surrounding the Pacific Ocean. They erupt when tectonic plates move, and the movement also causes earthquakes. There aren't just problems on land. The shifting plates create underwater earthquakes that produce giant tsunami waves that flood the shores. Japan was hit by a massive tsunami in 2011. If you were in charge, how would you make your country safe, when citizens insist on living near the shore?

Answer: Nile River

So many different people in Africa depend on the Nile for watering crops, drinking, producing electric power or transportation. But they all need to share. What would you do if your neighbor said he was going to dam up the river you needed to flood and water your crops? Managing a long river is difficult.

Answer: Atlantic Ocean

Molasses and rum, made from sugarcane, could be produced best in the hot climate of the Caribbean, and many plantations there were set up to specialize in growing it. War-torn Africa had warlords willing to sell captured enemies as slaves, and the Caribbean nations needed slaves to work on their sugar cane plantations.

The colder countries of Europe needed sugar from elsewhere and were willing to pay well for it. Each corner of the triangle was set up to trade at a profit, and couldn't easily switch to another way of making money.

But the slave trade was horrible. How would you stop countries from trading slaves without a war, or would it be worth a war?

Answer: Rome, almost 2000 years ago

The Roman aqueducts improved the lives of so many people in the Roman Empire, by bring water for irrigation, bathing, washing, and drinking. Imagine all the laws you'd have to pass, though! Farmers would complain about creeks and wells drained, townspeople would argue who got the water, landowners would complain about big stone aqueducts on their land...

Answer: River Thames

Only the World Wars have interrupted the famous annual rowing race, first held in 1829 before becoming yearly in 1856. Cancelling during wartime is an easy decision, but imagine how you would handle difficult situations in more normal years: a protester on the course, dangerous weather that sank the boats, a disputed judgment of the winner, crews threatening to quit...

As at any exciting athletic contest, officials must be ready for anything.

Answer: canals

Canals required a huge amount of labor to build, but once done, everything from coal to cabbages could glide on smooth waterways for hundreds of miles, rather than traveling over bumpy roads. Canals have been built for centuries, and use a clever method of "locks" to raise and lower boats from one section to the next. People often didn't trust a proposed canal, and thought it would be a waste of work and public money. How would you combine maps, estimates of labor and predictions about cheaper shipping costs, to convince communities they ought to cooperate and build a long canal?

Answer: The Dead Sea

The Baltic Sea is only about 1% salty, compared to the oceans' 3.5%, but the Dead Sea is a whopping 33.7%. The Great Salt Lake and Little Manitou Lake are salty, but are in the US and Canada. What useful mineral do you think you could extract from a salty lake or sea by evaporation, and sell?

Answer: Lake Victoria

John Hanning Speke (1827-1864), a British explorer, naturally wanted to honor his queen by giving her name to the largest lake he found on a trip to Africa. In 1858, he was the first European to see the lake, though Africans had lived near it and traveled past it for thousands of years.

Some of the local people called it Nalubaale, Nam Lolwe, or Nyanza. As long as everyone agrees to a name, there's no problem, and everyone seems happy with Lake Victoria. But it's worth remembering that if explorers go where native people live, then they're only discovering something new to them, but it's old to the people who live there. Why should a foreigner come and rename something, if local people already have a perfectly good name for it? How could you settle a disagreement?

Answer: The Ganges (or Ganga) River

The Ganga River serves millions of Indians. But crowding has caused factories and individuals to discharge home and industrial waste in the river, causing pollution that harms not only living creatures in the water but the humans who use the water for drinking, bathing and washing clothes.

There have been many plans to reduce pollution, but none has been successful enough. What would you do?

Answer: Panama Canal

Ships had to sail around the southern tip of South America, or unload and reload their goods onto another waiting ship, because there was no way to cross the tiny little strip of connecting land between North and South America and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

But those 48 miles were covered by a jungle filled with poisonous snakes and disease-carrying mosquitoes. The canal was successfully finished in 1914, after 25,000 people died over many years. When your workers were dying, how long would you have pushed ahead? Was the result worth the sacrifice?