This page ARCHIVED - August 2008
Print out the sheet, or paste into Word and adapt to your own needs.
Work through the exercises and tasks. You will need to open a WORD document a little later.
1. Go to the following site: LUNARBIN POPULATION CLOCK (http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop)
Please note that this loads a little applet (this takes longer to load than a normal web-page...)
Enter the world's population figures in the spaces below - you can alter the date to the required one using the drop down menu arrows.
I did this on the 21st of January 2003, and it came up with the figure of 6, 307, 267, 939 people on the earth.
Start of Lesson
The day you were born
Your 15th birthday
Your 30th birthday
Your 40th birthday
The end of the lesson (about an hour after the first set of figures)
Overall increase in population during the lesson (work it out)
2. Go to the second site now: WORLD POPULATION INFORMATION (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/)
Click on World Population Information, and the section which gives relative rates for different periods of time.
| Per day | Per hour | |
| Births | ||
| Deaths | ||
| Natural increase |
3. Go the site for the Chinese Population Data (http://www.cpirc.org.cn/en/eindex.htm) - link updated Feb 2004
Write down the following figures:
Total Population of China
Number added in the last year
4. Go to the next site: ANIMATION (http://www.igc.apc.org/desip/mapanim.html)
This shows a simple animation of the increase in the World's Population time. Watch the animation a few times to get a feeling for how people have started to swarm all over the earth...)
5. Explore the following site which has details of POPULATION for the various countries of the world, and offer a suggestion as to the last person to be born and to die in the countries. Some students like watching the figures change as they watch. They think that perhaps the details are accurate, although I think not...
This is where you need to open a Word document.
Using the sites which you have had access to, answer the following questions - where you make reference to a particular site or take information from it, you should provide the web address as a reference.
a) When is the world's population predicted to reach 7 billion ?
b) What problems are likely to start occurring as the population continues to rise to 8, 9, 10 billion and beyond ? - consider some of the resources which will become increasingly scarce.
c) How can we solve the problems of an ever increasing global population ? Give at least one example of a country which has introduced anti-natalist policies (aimed at reducing population growth)
d) Using the final site on the list, try and find some of the places with the lowest and highest number/rate of births (remember the YOUR NATION site that we used when we did the work on development..)
e) What are the issues surrounding the ever increasing number of elderly people ? - try to add to your homework task from a week or so ago.