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WHAT ARE NATURAL RESOURCES?
WHAT ARE NATURAL RESOURCES?
We use various materials for our basic needs. Some of them are found in nature and some have been made by human efforts.
Activity 5.1:
Make a list of various materials used by us in daily life and classify them as natural and man-made:
Does this list include air, water, soil and minerals? Since all these are obtained from nature, they are called natural resources.
Can air, water and soil be exhausted by human activities? You have already studied about water in Class VII. Is water a limitless resource?
In the light of the availability of various resources in nature, natural resources can be broadly classified into two kinds:
i. Inexhaustible Natural Resources
ii. Exhaustible Natural Resources
Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK
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INEXHAUSTIBLE NATURAL RESOURCES
INEXHAUSTIBLE NATURAL RESOURCES
These resources are present in unlimited quantity in nature and are not likely to be exhausted by human activities. Examples are: sunlight, air.
Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK
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EXHAUSTIBLE NATURAL RESOURCES
EXHAUSTIBLE NATURAL RESOURCES
The amount of these resources in nature is limited. They can be exhausted by human activities. Examples of these resources are forests, wildlife, minerals, coal, petroleum, natural gas etc.
Activity 5.2:
(It is a group activity)
* Take some containers. Fill them with popcorn/peanuts/roasted gram/toffees.
* Divide students into groups of seven each.
* Further divide each group into three subgroups containing 1, 2 and 4 students.
* Label them as first, second and third generation respectively.
* These sub-groups represent the consumers. As population is growing, second and third generations have larger number of consumers.
* Put one full container for each group on a table.
* Ask consumers of the first generation from each group to consume eatables from the container of their group.
* Now, ask the second generation consumers from each group to do the same.
* Ask students to observe carefully the availability of eatables in each container.
* If something is left in the containers, ask third generation from each group to consume it.
* Now, finally observe whether all the consumers of the third generation got the eatables or not.
* Also observe if anything is still left in any of the containers.
Assume that the eatables in the container represent the total availability of an exhausible natural resource like coal, petroleum or natural gas. Each group may have a different consumption pattern. Are the earlier generations of any group too greedy? It may be that the earlier generations in some groups were concerned about the coming generation(s) and left something for them.
In this chapter we will learn about some exhaustible natural resources like coal, petroleum and natural gas. These were formed from the dead remains of living organisms (fossils). So, these are all known as fossil fuels.
Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK