--- title: The Arctic and Antarctica — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The Arctic and Antarctica», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The two polar regions are opposites: the Arctic, at the top of the world, is a frozen ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica, at the botto --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / The Arctic and Antarctica # The Arctic and Antarctica Lesson 15 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/0/) — The two polar regions are opposites: the Arctic, at the top of the world, is a frozen ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica, at the bottom, is a continent of land buried under ice and surrounded by ocean. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/1/) — Polar bears live only in the Arctic and wild penguins only in the southern half of the world, so a cartoon of a polar bear chasing penguins could never happen in nature. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/2/) — Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, driest and highest continent: its ice is on average about 2 km thick, and if it all melted the seas would rise by about 58 metres. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/3/) — Your freezer at home is about minus 18 degrees; Vostok station once measured about minus 89. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/4/) — In Europa Universalis 5 the far north is mostly blank, low-value land and Antarctica is not even known: it was first sighted in 1820, near the end of the game's period. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/5/) — Yet the Arctic was never empty: Inuit, Sámi, Nenets and other peoples have lived there for thousands of years. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/6/) — Near the poles the year has strange days: north of the Arctic Circle the summer Sun can shine all night, and in winter it may not rise at all for days. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/7/) — The Arctic is a frozen ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica is a continent of land covered by ice and surrounded by ocean. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/8/) — The ice sheet covering Antarctica is on average about 2 km thick and holds roughly 70 percent of the world's fresh water. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/9/) — Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, driest and highest continent on average (so little snow or rain falls that it counts as a desert), and the Soviet station Vostok recorded the lowest measured air temperature, about minus 89 degrees Celsius, in 1983. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/10/) — Under the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, Antarctica is kept for peace and science, with no military bases, and a later agreement bans mining there. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/11/) — Antarctica has no permanent residents, only scientists and support staff at research stations, from about 1,000 in winter to several thousand in summer. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/12/) — Antarctica was first sighted in 1820, and Roald Amundsen's Norwegian team reached the South Pole first on 14 December 1911, about a month before Robert Scott's British team, who all died on the way back. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/13/) — North of the Arctic Circle the Sun stays up for at least one full day in summer and stays below the horizon for at least one full day in winter; at the North Pole itself there are about six months of daylight and six months of dark. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/14/) — Eight countries have land in the Arctic: Canada, Denmark through Greenland, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/15/) — About four million people live in the Arctic, including Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit in Canada and Greenland, the Sámi in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and the Nenets in Russia. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/16/) — Since satellite measurements began in 1979, the area of Arctic sea ice at its September low has shrunk by roughly 40 percent, and the Arctic is warming about three to four times faster than the world as a whole: white ice reflects most sunlight back into space, but dark open sea soaks it up, so less ice means more warming. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/17/) — For centuries Europeans searched for a sea route north of Canada to Asia; Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845 vanished with all 129 men, and Roald Amundsen first sailed the Northwest Passage between 1903 and 1906. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/15-the-arctic-and-antarctica/18/) — Polar bears live only in the Arctic and wild penguins only in the southern hemisphere, so they never meet in nature. - ← previous: [Latin America and the Caribbean](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/14-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/) - next →: [The great rivers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/16-the-great-rivers/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)