What’s more than one kilometre long, covers 7.7 hectares, holds 250 million litres of water, is as deep as 35 metres and is a beautiful turquoise colour?
It’s the biggest swimming pool in the world.
In case it’s hard to imagine just how much water that is, imagine a huge lagoon the size of 6,000 regular-sized pools. It’s a whopping 12 football fields long.
Located beside the ocean at a resort named San Alfonso del Mar in Algarrobo, Chile, it holds the Guinness record as the world’s largest swimming pool.
Since the ocean off Algarrobo has dangerous waves and strong currents, the resort’s builders decided to create a safe place for visitors to swim, sail, kayak and scuba dive.
Each building at the resort has its own docks and beaches with palm trees.
The pool’s water is pumped in from the Pacific Ocean, filtered and treated and stays a constant 26°C in the summer. That’s nine degrees higher than the water in the ocean.
Crystal Lagoons Corporation, which invented the process that treats the ocean water, uses a special technology that needs far fewer chemicals than are used to clean other pools.
Visitors should be prepared to splash, play and have a lot of fun in a pool this size. But if you decide to swim from one end of the pool to the other, make sure you eat lots of high-energy food first. It’s going to be a very long swim.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Kathleen Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
The Guinness Book of World Records collects amazing facts about the world’s largest, shortest, biggest, heaviest and longest people, places and things.
However, recently people working for the book announced that they would no longer accept entries for the shortest song, poem or concert. This decision came after a musician played a concert of only one note and wanted to get into the book for playing the shortest concert. The people at Guinness said “no” because they thought it made a joke of the book and made it seem less important. Do you agree with this decision? Why or why not?
Reading Prompt: Text Features
Borrow a Guinness Book of World Records from your school or public library. How do the table of contents, pictures and text boxes help you to understand the text?
Primary
Identify some text features and explain how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading: 2.3).
Junior
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help readers understand texts (OME, Reading: 2.3).
Intermediate
Identify a variety of text features and explain how they help communicate meaning (OME, Reading: 2.3).
Grammar Feature: Comparative Adjectives
We often use adjectives to compare nouns. We when do this, we use adjectives that end in -er or -est.
For example: The black cat is smaller than the white dog, but the orange cat is the smallest.
Fill in the following sentences with the correct form of the adjective:
1. The pool at the community centre was large, but the one in Chile was the large____.
2. The number of people in the swimming pool was great in the morning, but in the afternoon it was the great______.
3. The Guinness Book of World Records is the big___ volume of world records.
4. My swimsuit is bright___ than yours.
