Forest Capital

During our visit to the Wynn School in Tewkesbury, our Wrangler Mr. Kevin told us about a country that will open its new capital in the same year that the Wynn students will be graduating high school in 2022.

The West African country of Equatorial Guinea is currently one of very few countries whose capital is on an island that is separate most of its mainland territory on a continent (Denmark is another good example).

In the case of Equatorial Guinea, this arrangement has proven difficult to maintain, so the government has embarked on a project to move its capital to a mainland location that will be known as Oyala. It is fitting that the United States is helping to fund this move, since we moved our own national capital a couple of times before the construction of Washington, D.C.

Read more about the challenges facing Equatorial Guinea and the reasons for this relocation on the BBC web site. The Monga Bay web site describes concerns about the 8,000 hectares of rain forest that would be cleared for construction.

This planner's rendering of the future capital Oyala resembles the
PacMan video game, but it is a serious
plan for settling 200,000 residents in the new city.

Wynn School, Tewksbury - December 9th

42º 37' 48" N
71º 18' 08" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far! 



The EarthView team is happy to be making our second school visit of the week to Wynn Middle School in Tewksbury! Last year we had an interesting trip to the school as our GPS devices failed us, bringing us to the wrong location! John W. Wynn Middle School is located at 1 Griffin Way, not 1 Griffin Road. This led to much confusion and a hilarious ride to school, the story about that adventure can be found here. 

Our visit to the school last year also made national news! The article found in US News & World Report can be found here. 

This week, we came across a neat video explaining the different map projections and why they are distorted! Give it a watch and tell us what you think!




If you would like to visit the website mentioned at the end of the video where you can see the true size of a country compared to other countries, visit thetruesize.com 

We hope that the students of Wynn Middle School enjoy their visit with EarthView! We will be back to the school in January! 

Ahern Middle School, Foxboro - December 6th

42° 4' 27" N
71° 14' 18" W
Learn more about Lat/Long (including how to look them up by address)
Also, compare today's coordinates to those of other recent EarthView outings, near and far!



After a brief hiatus from Thanksgiving Break, EarthView visits are back in swing! Our first stop this week brought us to Ahern Middle School in Foxboro. 

We always have a wonderful visit with the sixth graders at the school whenever we stop by, and we have stopped by almost every year since the EarthView project began in 2008. 

If you would like to see all of the blog posts we have written about our visits to Ahern, click here and here!