OCR people - how did u find today?

I did question 7 & 10 (ocr a), I found the rural environments one pretty easy but i completely ran out of time on the hazards question and literally had to rush through writing about cyclones and landslides, and only used about 6 examples in the whole essay when I knew so many more...Im so scared that i'm gna do reaaaaaaaaaaally badly :frown:

How did everyone else find it? Did u think it was easier than tuesday's paper?

Reply 1

TheWolf

15

Urban + Hazards ones are pretty good. :smile:

Im sure you did alright!

Reply 2

*hedgehog*

Hazards was fine. The mass movement was practically the same as the one he had done in class so that was ok. The EU one was harder though.

Reply 3

juicymangoes

OP

how did you structure your hazards question?

Coz I did 7 ("some hazards are easier to predict than others"-discuss), as I knew nothing about landslides / cyclones, I thought 'what a stupid question' as i could have written much better stuff if the question was:
"does the success of a prediction mainly depend on the hazard"

But oh well!
I basically wrote about each hazard in turn, volcanoes (saying theyre easiest as their location is known- i used pinatubo, then montseratt for unpredictable)
then earthquakes (california's prediction methods for predictability and technology and Tangshan for unpredictability) then cyclones (bay of bengal 1970 and 1997 for comparison between before and after prediction methods used) and for landslides I just wrote theyre almost unpredictable, as only terracettes and leaning walls give it away bt could be dismissed as soil creep. (eg. thredbo, australia)
but I was reaaaaaaly vague about everything and just concluded with '..but it depends mainly on the economic status of the country as to whether their prediction methods are successsful, not so much on the type of erruption.'

so yeah it was a bit pooey I duno if my answer sounds wrong but i literally scribbled it down...

duno if thats ne help 2 ne1....

or whether Im just waffling as I tend to do in exams!........ :p:

Reply 4

meawinner1

Wow that paper was soo good we had done the mass movement question before so that was good and a similar self help question came up a few years ago so that was good too. I just can't believe I won't be doing geo ne more. :frown:

Reply 5

TheWolf

15

juicymangoes

how did you structure your hazards question?

Coz I did 7 ("some hazards are easier to predict than others"-discuss), as I knew nothing about landslides / cyclones, I thought 'what a stupid question' as i could have written much better stuff if the question was:
"does the success of a prediction mainly depend on the hazard"

But oh well!
I basically wrote about each hazard in turn, volcanoes (saying theyre easiest as their location is known- i used pinatubo, then montseratt for unpredictable)
then earthquakes (california's prediction methods for predictability and technology and Tangshan for unpredictability) then cyclones (bay of bengal 1970 and 1997 for comparison between before and after prediction methods used) and for landslides I just wrote theyre almost unpredictable, as only terracettes and leaning walls give it away bt could be dismissed as soil creep. (eg. thredbo, australia)
but I was reaaaaaaly vague about everything and just concluded with '..but it depends mainly on the economic status of the country as to whether their prediction methods are successsful, not so much on the type of erruption.'

so yeah it was a bit pooey I duno if my answer sounds wrong but i literally scribbled it down...

duno if thats ne help 2 ne1....

or whether Im just waffling as I tend to do in exams!........ :p:

I did pretty much the same as you. :smile:

Reply 6

juicymangoes

OP

TheWolf

I did pretty much the same as you. :smile:

I love u

Reply 7

Cartouche

4

As it turns out, my hoped-for-questions never came, but that didn't matter too much in the end. One hazards question was the same as one we'd done in class a while back, but it was on slopes, so that and the hurricane question I left alone. I thus went on to do the question on

''Predictions have different degrees of success for different hazards. Discuss.

So I talked about hurricanes, and how they were relatively easy to predict, and then moved onto earthquakes, which are pretty random. Due to some chance, I'd been reading a lot about predictions in my hurried revision this morning, so I got things such as Loma Prieta being on an unknown fault on the world's most closely studied plate boundary, and how the Chinese saved 90,000 in 1975 with a freak correct earthquake prediction. Having used these two hazards to illustrate the difference, I then mentioned how prediction of hazard is different to prediction of event, and mentioned floods and landslides briefly before using volcanoes as the thrust of this arguement, and Pinatubo to back that up.

Then came the pretty part: I argued how predictions were only successful if they worked. My American friends had accidentaly helped me hugely with that, as I mentioned how Californians are dulled to earthquake threats, before talking about how the residents of Atacumbo in Colombia thought they knew better than the volcanoligsts and got lahared. Predictions won't help save the Eastern Seaboard of the US from collapsing Canary Islands, and how people in poorer countries don't receive the same level of prediction as those in richer countries, and how richer hazards are monitored more closely than poorer ones. Okay, so that was hazards solved.

'Urban areas have a negative effect on the physical environment on a variety of scales. Discuss.'

This turned out to be a great question, even if I forgot to argue against the question or mention sustainability. I started with Urban Sprawl, mentioned the effects of pollution, the problems caused by industry, the problems caused by LEDC slums and finally how all these problems are caused by humans playing with a very complex system. I got in all elements of geography here, and used a garisson of case studies, including sinking Shanghai, sprawling San Francisco, South Asian petrochemical smog, Polish acid rain, Mexican earthquakes, inner-city Philadelphia, Honshu megalopolises, rain in Chicago, El Nino and the attractions of Sao Paulo. Woo!