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bwy wrote:

The Eviscerator wrote:

strikerbear10 wrote:Could someone please give me a good website for topo maps?

topomaps.usgs.gov
The test probably won't have many questions on topo maps though... Even if they do, they will probably be very basic things that you can use common sense and figure out.

On the contrary, my regionals test was just 3 topo maps, with a lot of questions about them.
It was pretty hard, but i managed to get 3rd

What questions on topo maps did you have?
On my regionals test, the test was about 1/3 map, but it only asked basic things, like find the lowest elevation, highest elevation, tributaries of a river, sinuosity ratio of a river, etc.

*EDIT: Question: Is hydraulic head essentially the height of groundwater above sea level? I know that it is the pressure groundwater is exerting and is calculated relative to a datum, such as sea level, and since you can directly calculate hydraulic gradient from it, this seems to make sense to me. I know this is probably an over-simplification, but oh well.

Also, can someone explain Darcy's Law more in depth? I'm looking at the wikipage for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seepage#Darcy.27s_law), but I have no idea how to calculate the rate of pore pressure...

Also, do you guys think that putting a list of common Chezy and Manning coefficients and permeability coefficients on the sheets is necessary?

The Eviscerator wrote:

bwy wrote:
On the contrary, my regionals test was just 3 topo maps, with a lot of questions about them.
It was pretty hard, but i managed to get 3rd

What questions on topo maps did you have?
On my regionals test, the test was about 1/3 map, but it only asked basic things, like find the lowest elevation, highest elevation, tributaries of a river, sinuosity ratio of a river, etc.

*EDIT: Question: Is hydraulic head essentially the height of groundwater above sea level? I know that it is the pressure groundwater is exerting and is calculated relative to a datum, such as sea level, and since you can directly calculate hydraulic gradient from it, this seems to make sense to me. I know this is probably an over-simplification, but oh well.

Also, can someone explain Darcy's Law more in depth? I'm looking at the wikipage for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seepage#Darcy.27s_law), but I have no idea how to calculate the rate of pore pressure...

Also, do you guys think that putting a list of common Chezy and Manning coefficients and permeability coefficients on the sheets is necessary?

chezy and manning coefficients sounds like overkill. i never needed them for regionals or states, just the equations and basic plugging in.
hydraulic head is pretty confusing, but according to wikipedia it sounds like it's basically the height of water relative to something. it could be sealevel, or it could even be the depth from the ground to the water, or it could be how high water rises in a tube when put in an aquifer according to the stuff I've read.

the topo test i took asked about stream order, gradient, sinuosity ratio, what certain symbols meant, direction of stream flow, alluvial landforms (that question was hard but I can't remember exactly what it was asking...)
sorry i'm probably not being very helpful.

bwy wrote:

The Eviscerator wrote: What questions on topo maps did you have?
On my regionals test, the test was about 1/3 map, but it only asked basic things, like find the lowest elevation, highest elevation, tributaries of a river, sinuosity ratio of a river, etc.

*EDIT: Question: Is hydraulic head essentially the height of groundwater above sea level? I know that it is the pressure groundwater is exerting and is calculated relative to a datum, such as sea level, and since you can directly calculate hydraulic gradient from it, this seems to make sense to me. I know this is probably an over-simplification, but oh well.

Also, can someone explain Darcy's Law more in depth? I'm looking at the wikipage for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seepage#Darcy.27s_law), but I have no idea how to calculate the rate of pore pressure...

Also, do you guys think that putting a list of common Chezy and Manning coefficients and permeability coefficients on the sheets is necessary?

chezy and manning coefficients sounds like overkill. i never needed them for regionals or states, just the equations and basic plugging in.
hydraulic head is pretty confusing, but according to wikipedia it sounds like it's basically the height of water relative to something. it could be sealevel, or it could even be the depth from the ground to the water, or it could be how high water rises in a tube when put in an aquifer according to the stuff I've read.

the topo test i took asked about stream order, gradient, sinuosity ratio, what certain symbols meant, direction of stream flow, alluvial landforms (that question was hard but I can't remember exactly what it was asking...)
sorry i'm probably not being very helpful.

The only question I've ever encountered on Chezy-Manning is "what is the label for this symbol?" and the answer was m/s for velocity haha.
And for hydraulic head, although it does involve pressure, etc, I doubt they'll go any deeper than height above a reference point. That reference point is almost always sea level.

Thanks.
Anybody have a good way of measuring the length of a stream on a topographic map without a string? We just kind of twisted the ruler around to get the length, which seemed kind of imprecise...

The Eviscerator wrote:Thanks.
Anybody have a good way of measuring the length of a stream on a topographic map without a string? We just kind of twisted the ruler around to get the length, which seemed kind of imprecise...

Photo copy a ruler on to the edge of one of your cheat sheets.

rfscoach wrote:

The Eviscerator wrote:Thanks.
Anybody have a good way of measuring the length of a stream on a topographic map without a string? We just kind of twisted the ruler around to get the length, which seemed kind of imprecise...

Photo copy a ruler on to the edge of one of your cheat sheets.

We already have that. It's how to measure it that gets imprecise...

So is the Caspian Sea considered a lake or not? If asked on a test to rank the largest lakes, should I include it?

I would consider the Caspian Sea a lake; wikipedia says that it was formed from tectonic uplift, so it is basically a lake from natural damming. Plus, it has no outflow, rather just inflow of freshwater. Seas are usually connected to oceans. However, I'm not sure if people that write tests will consider it a lake because they might see the word sea and assume it is a sea.

The Eviscerator wrote:I would consider the Caspian Sea a lake; wikipedia says that it was formed from tectonic uplift, so it is basically a lake from natural damming. Plus, it has no outflow, rather just inflow of freshwater. Seas are usually connected to oceans. However, I'm not sure if people that write tests will consider it a lake because they might see the word sea and assume it is a sea.

I don't think it's generally accepted as a lake (do correct me if I'm wrong), so I wouldn't put that in there.

Whether it's an inland sea or a lake is still being debated. I don't think a well-written test would have you make that distinction, but the only thing you can really do is explain the issue and try to get clarification on what the test writer's definition of "sea" is.