Susan Uandal, age 14, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for her question:
HOW WERE THE OCEANS NAMED?
The three great oceans of the world are actually parts of one continuous body of water which scientists call the world ocean. The water makes the continents lie like islands in the vast ocean. Storm waves on the Indian Ocean between Africa and Australia can travel across
the Pacific to the coast of California, and water from the ocean near the South Pole often moves north to the equator.
The Pacific, the Atlantic and the Indian are the three great oceans of the world. And one smaller ocean completes the exclusive list: the Arctic Ocean in the North Pole area where the Atlantic and Pacific meet.
Sometimes the waters where the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific meet in the Southern Hemisphere are called the Antarctic Ocean but most geographers say this is not a separate ocean. Smaller bodies of water are called seas, gulfs and bays.
Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer, named the world's largest and deepest ocean Pacific, which means peaceful. It covers more than a third of the world's surface, stretching across 63.8 million square miles.
The world's lowest spot is located in the Pacific Ocean in the Mariana Trench near Guam. You have to go down 36,198 feet to hit the bottom.
Second largest body of water in the world is the Atlantic Ocean which covers about 31.5 million square miles.
Atlantic Ocean was named after the Atlas Mountains by the ancient Romans. These mountains rose at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, and marked the limits of the known world. Atlantic probably referred to the fact that the ocean lay beyond the Atlas range.
In the late 300s B.C., a Greek explorer named Pytheas sailed near the Arctic Circle and reported finding a frozen sea. The ancient Greeks named the Arctic region for a constellation that they called Arktos, the bear. The Arctic Ocean is the world's smallest and covers about 3.6 million square miles.
Indian Ocean, with about 28.3 million square miles, rates third place honors. Named for India, the ocean has been an important trade route since civilized man's earliest days.
The waters of the world's oceans never stop moving. Waves are set in motion by winds and by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. In an ocean wave, water moves up and down. There is no forward motion as the wave goes through the water. When an ocean wave reaches land, however, it starts to drag on the bottom and it then also moves forward.