Passion Projects for Geography/Art.

Answered

A passion project is something you do out of your own will, passion--- and largely to have fun. So if you find these ideas uninteresting, I hope they at least bring you in the direction of something you'd be passionate about doing.

Here are some ideas:

1) Something about the fractal nature of countries' borders. Like how the more precise your measurements are, the longer a country's border will be. Because of the roughness. The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot published a paper asking how long the coastline of Britain is. Definitely worth checking out.

2) In history, I wrote a research paper evaluating the impact natural resource abundance has on certain countries' development of democracy/wealth. Interesting to look at the often surprising correlations between resource abundance and domestic political movements, especially in emergent economies. Or any of these weird geographic correlations.

3) Pick a country you're interested in (but not a well-known one; something random), learn everything about it, and maybe a passion project will emerge.

4) I used to do orienteering, and we would get these topographical maps that you couldn't find anywhere else. They were quite helpful. Even so, maps are difficult to read, and even more difficult to orient. You could make or study maps. Maybe a new digital mapping software system??

5) This is barely geography, but I read something somewhere that children in car-dependent countries are deficient in navigational skills because the act of sitting in a car is so passive. Could be something.

6) See if your town has some nice, empty walls & propose a mural.

7) Crop circles. Aliens? Indigenous peoples? You tell me.

8) Could geothermal energy become a scalable natural resource in countries with volcanoes?

9) Take a color that is widely prevalent in art/painting and trace the origins of its pigment. You will find some WILD stuff. Purple, blue, and green have especially fascinating histories.

10) Write one microfiction story every day. You will probably become an amazing writer in the process, and likely have some interesting stories to look back on.

11) Impact of nuclear testing on geography. Just popped into my head as I was thinking about the 'Rainbow Warrior' disaster (SO worth looking up).

Hope these get your creative mind rolling in the right direction! Now I want a passion project too lol...