Geography of Kazakhstan the water in Kazakhstan is polluted by industrial effluents, pesticide and fertilizer residue, and, in some places, radioactive elements. The most visible damage has been to the Aral Sea, which as recently as the 1970s was larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America save Lake Superior. The sea began to shrink rapidly when sharply increased irrigation and other demands on the only significant tributaries, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya (the latter reaching the Aral from neighboring Uzbekistan), all but eliminated inflow. During the Soviet Era, Kazakhstan received water from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Disappearing-filament pyrometer Disappearing-filament pyrometer The disappearing-filament pyrometer is an optical pyrometer, in which the temperature of a glowing incandescent object is measured by comparing it to the light of a heated filament. Invented independently in 1901 by Ludwig Holborn and Ferdinand Kurlbaum in Germany and Harmon Northrup Morse in the United States, it was the first device which could measure temperatures above 1000°C. Disappearing filament pyrometers have been used to measure temperatures between about 600°C and 3000°C. Like other optical pyrometers they are used to measure the temperature of objects too hot for contact thermometers, such as molten metals. Widely used in