Kardtects

Friday’s Fun Fact: Deserts and the Kardtects Lost Desert Card Houses

card houses
Lost Desert Card House

Kardtects are always looking at creative and educational ways to expand our building card systems. Yet, the wonderful thing is when our customers help us on this with the fabulous feedback and ideas they send to us. It is through their support we have advanced the design of the Desert Set of Kardtects.

It has been a wonderful experience to look into the diverse elements of this part of the natural world, how so in hospitable it is, and yet it is from these regions as that important cultures grew and flourished, albeit on the edges of these vast seas of sand. Like all the scenery sets of Kardtects, deserts also have their incredible fun facts. Here are ten fun facts about deserts…

  • Did you know that the word ‘Sahara’ actually just means ‘Desert’, as such it is taken as being grammatically incorrect to call it the Sahara desert. As this is basically like saying Desert-Desert, which unlike ‘New York’, it was not so good that they named it twice. Instead, it should just be called ‘The Sahara’.
  • The Sahara is the largest ‘Hot’ desert, and spreads into 12 countries. The second largest is the Arabian desert, and is the second hottest, but significantly smaller.
  • The largest ‘Cold’ Desert is in Antarctica.
  • The driest desert is the Atacama desert in South America.
  • There are a number of different accepted ways to define what is a desert, but the most typical aspect is that they are areas that receive extremely low amounts of rain. As such, the ice-free areas of the Artic and Antarctic are also technically deserts, but are called Polar Deserts. (Perhaps a future Kardtect design?)
  • Around one third of the world’s surface is classified as a desert. Yet only 20% of those desert areas are actually covered in sand.
  • The word ‘Desert’ actually means ‘An Abandoned Place’
  • The Gobi Desert is growing at a fast rate due to desertification, a process that turns fertile lands into desert areas. It is caused by humans cutting down forests, droughts, climate change and other environmental factors.
  • German particle physicist Gerhard Knies calculated that in around six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year.
  • Due to ‘sun-energy’ that the deserts gain, the ‘Desertec Industrial Initiative’ was formed to focus on a project that aims to construct a network of solar and wind farms stretching across Africa and the Middle East deserts, which provide electricity to Europe.