North and South America

🌎 Imagine you are drinking orange juice at breakfast. Those oranges might have grown in Brazil. Your trainers could be made from rubber tapped from trees in Colombia. A lot of what we use every day travels from the Americas — two enormous continents stretching all the way from the frozen Arctic in the north to the icy tip of South America in the south. Let's explore!

North America includes Canada, the United States of America (USA), Mexico and the countries of Central America and the Caribbean. South America lies below — it includes Brazil (the largest country there), Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile and many more. Geographers use atlases and globes to locate these countries. Key cities include New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Lima.

Now look at where the Americas sit on a globe. An imaginary line called the Equator runs around the middle of the Earth. Regions near the Equator receive strong, direct sunshine all year and are very hot and wet — perfect for rainforests like the Amazon. Two more lines, the Tropic of Cancer (north of the Equator) and the Tropic of Capricorn (south of it), mark where the sun is directly overhead at different times of year.

The Americas also sit in two hemispheres — halves of the Earth. North America is in the Northern Hemisphere, so its seasons match ours in the UK (summer in June–August). South America is mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, so its seasons are flipped — Christmas Day there can be a hot summer day! The environment — meaning the natural surroundings including climate, plants and animals — changes dramatically from north to south across the Americas.

The Americas are incredibly rich in natural resources — things found in nature that people use. Canada and the USA produce huge amounts of oil, gas, wheat and timber. Brazil grows coffee, sugar cane and soya beans. Chile mines copper — the metal used in electrical wires in your home! Peru mines silver and gold. These resources are traded — bought and sold — with countries all around the world, including the UK.

Let's compare a region of the Americas with somewhere familiar. The Amazon Basin in Brazil is a vast, low-lying area of tropical rainforest — hot, humid and bursting with wildlife. Compare that with the Scottish Highlands in the UK — cool, hilly, with moorland and forests. Both regions have mountains nearby and important rivers, but the Amazon receives about 2,300 mm of rain a year while the Highlands get around 3,000 mm. Their economic activities differ too: the Amazon depends on farming, Brazil nuts and eco-tourism, while the Highlands rely on sheep farming, salmon fishing and whisky production.