Panama Canal

24.12.2024

Panama Canal

Why in the news?                        

Recently, the US President-elect Donald Trump has hinted that his administration might attempt to regain control of the Panama Canal.

About Panama Canal:

• It is a man made waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the Isthmus of Panama.
• It is owned and administered by Panama, and it is 40 miles long from shoreline to shoreline.

○It was built by the United states and completed in August 1914,

○It is one of the two most strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal.

○From its opening in 1914 until 1979, the Panama Canal was controlled solely by the United States, which built it.

○In 1979, however, control of the canal passed to the Panama Canal Commission, a joint agency of the United States and the Republic of Panama, and complete control passed to Panama at noon on December 31, 1999.

• It is a sophisticated, highly-engineered system which uses a system of locks and elevators to take ships from one end to the other.
• This is needed because the two oceans that the Panama Canal connects do not lie at the same elevation, with the Pacific slightly higher than the Atlantic.
• This difference means that for a ship entering the canal through the Atlantic, it needs to gain elevation during its journey to the Pacific. This is achieved using a lock system which lifts and drops vessels to the required sea level at either end of the canal.
• Basically, locks are either flooded (to gain elevation) or drained (to lose elevation), and act as water elevators. In total, the system comprises three sets of locks — 12 locks in total — which are serviced using artificial lakes and channels.

                                                                 Source: Indian Express

The Panama Canal connects which of the following water bodies?

A.Atlantic Ocean and Pacific ocean

B.Red sea and Mediterranean Sea

C.Baltic Sea and Nordic Sea

D.Yellow river and Yangtze river

Answer A