Scienceville
Landforms on Earth
A mountain taller than Everest hides under the sea, and one island is mostly ice. And guess what: you may be standing on a plateau right now!
Did you know?
Mount Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, at 8,848.86 metres. But Mauna Kea in Hawaii starts deep under the ocean. Measured from its base on the seabed, it is even taller than Everest!
Greenland is the world's largest island, but about four-fifths of it is covered with ice. Long ago, Erik the Red gave it a cheerful name so that people would want to come and live there!
Barren Island, in the Andaman Sea, is the only confirmed active volcano in the Indian subcontinent. No people live there, only goats, birds, bats and rodents (small gnawing animals like rats).
Try this: Landforms on a Plate
Take some play dough or clay and a large plate. Build a tall pointed mountain, a flat-topped plateau and a valley between two hills. Pour a little water on the plate and make an island in it. Label each landform with a small strip of paper. Can your family guess them all before reading the labels?
Go further: Living on a Plateau
A plateau is high land with a fairly flat top. If you live in Hyderabad, you live on one: the Deccan Plateau! It covers most of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, and is about 600 metres high on average. 'Deccan' comes from the Sanskrit word 'dakshina', meaning south. The plateau slopes gently towards the east, so rivers like the Godavari and Krishna flow east into the Bay of Bengal.