What is Explanation?
- 1. Definition and purposes of Explanation
- 2. Generic structure of Explanation
- General statement; stating the phenomenon issues which are to be explained.
- Sequenced explanation; stating a series of steps which explain the phenomena.
- 3. Language Feature
- Featuring generic participant; sun, rain, etc
- Using chronological connection; to begin with, next, etc
- Using passive voice pattern
- Using simple present tense
EXAMPLE TEXT:
Waterspouts near St. Thomas |
HOW DOES THE RAINING FISH HAPPENED?
Although it may sound like some sort of mythical event, the Henniges
weren’t telling tales. Neither were people in Manna, India, who reported
seeing live, pencil-sized fish falling from the sky in July. It can
happen, say scientists. The culprit: waterspouts.
Waterspouts, which are essentially tornadoes over water, form when
cold air moves over warm water. They churn at speeds up to 200 miles an
hour, but dissipate when rain begins to fall from their host cloud.
Depending on how fast the winds are whipping, anything that is within
about one yard of the surface of the water, including sailboats or fish
of different sizes, can be lifted into the air, says Nilton Renno, an
atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan.
A waterspout can sometimes successfully suck small objects like fish
out of the water and all the way up into the cloud. Even if the
waterspout stops spinning, the fish in the cloud can be carried over
land, buffeted up and down and around with the cloud’s winds until its
currents no longer keep the flying fish in the atmosphere. It’s like the
fish are swimming in the cloud, says Renno. Depending on how far they
travel and how high they are taken into the atmosphere, the fish are
sometimes dead by the time they rain down. People as far as 100 miles
inland have experienced raining fish, he explains.
Fish can also be sucked up from rivers. The Henniges’ condo is just
one mile above Lake Natoma and the Nimbus fish hatchery, where they
think the fish came from. Carl Hennige writes in an e-mail that there
was “an enormous windstorm” just before the fish fell.
Raining fish is not a common weather phenomenon. Fewer than 10
occurrences have been reported in the past year, according to a news
search, so local five-day forecasts probably won’t include fish showers.
Still, people have reported such events for centuries.
In the early 1900s, Charles Fort, a collector of stories of odd
weather happenings, theorized that there was an ocean orbiting the earth
that occasionally dropped its creatures onto the planet, writes author
Richard Cerveny in his book, Freaks of the Storm.
Now that scientists have advanced technology like Doppler radar, they
are less reliant on personal accounts. Fewer people are asked to
describe the odd objects they see falling from the sky, says Cerveny,
who is also a professor of weather and climate at Arizona State
University. Also, people are less likely to report any strange
occurrences now than they were 100 years ago. Cerveny explains that
today, logical explanations through science are more readily available,
so there is less mysticism behind strange weather phenomena. “They tend
to sound more kooky now if they report it,” he says. Even though fewer
personal accounts of strange weather have not necessarily hurt
meteorology, “maybe it has taken away some of the fun of it,” says
Cerveny.
Stories of raining fish, frogs or even turtles are an effective
teaching tool for Cerveny when he lectures or gives presentations.
“Everybody in that kind of a setting loves to hear about odd and unusual
weather,” he says. Sometimes after a presentation people pull Cerveny
aside, saying, “Well, when I was a kid…”
So keep an eye out, because next time the clouds open up, it may be more than raindrops that keep falling on your head.
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