To make life easier and eliminate possible inconveniences, people have learned to come up with different inventions. Using physics, you can force the forces of nature to act in their own interests. What is a gutter? According to the explanatory dictionaries of the Russian language, there are several possible answers to this question.
What is a gutter: meaning of the word
First of all, the gutter is an artificial oblong depression of a rectangular or semicircular shape, used to drain water or pour something. Gutters can be made of stone or wood, hollowed out in rock, made of metal materials. The principle of operation is such that the trench contributes to the unhindered flow of the substance along the walls from one edge to the other.
The most common example of gutters in everyday life are drain pipes installed around the perimeter of each building and draining rain and melt water from the roofs.
Safety gutter
This interesting term denotes a special depression in the railway tracks, designed to ensure human safety in the event of a fall on the rails. The free space between the rails is formed due to the absence of sleepers. Most often, safety gutters are equipped at subway stations. If it so happened that a person was on the tracks in front of a train, do not panic and try to climb onto the platform. It is enough to lie in the gutter parallel to the rail, cuddle to the bottom and wait for the passage of the composition.
What is a gutter in nature
Gutters can not only be made by man, but also created by the power of nature. This implies the second definition of the phenomenon as a long and narrow hollow at the bottom of the sea or ocean. Interestingly, such a trench often becomes the base of a volcano or the epicenter of an earthquake.
This element is formed in the process of convergence of the plates, when the oceanic crust is pressed under another continental or oceanic crust. The longest oceanic trench on the planet is the Peruvian-Chilean, and the deepest is the Mariana Trench, which extends for almost 11 km towards the center of the Earth.