Image via Wikipedia

Our earth is like a big ball. Its north extreme is called the North Pole. The southern extreme is called the South Pole.

The region around the North Pole is called the Artic. The region around the South Pole is called the Antarctic. The Antarctic is ice-covered land surround by an ocean. The Arctic is hollow at the top of globe. The Antarctic is a corresponding bulge at the bottom. It as  if the creator pressed the globe with his cosmic thumb and made a huge dent the north pole; its effect passed through the earth and appeared as a swelling at the south pole. The dent on the top of the earth is the Arctic Ocean, the world’s smallest ocean. The bulge at the bottom is the continent of Antarctica, the world’s coldest continent.

The Antarctic has more ice than the Arctic about eight times more. This is because the Antarctic is mainly a continent. It has very little heat-strong capacity. On the other hand, the Arctic is mainly an ocean. Water as we know, has great capacity to store heat. Thus the Arctic Ocean stores the summer heat and uses it later on to moderate the cold of winter.

The whole of the Antarctic is covered by an ice sheet. The average thickness of this ice sheet is more than a mile. The Arctic dose not has that much of ice. Only Greenland and some high region of the arctic are covered with ice.

There is no life on the Antarctic. The vast ice sheet about 6000 feet in thickness and the terrific snowstorms make any kind of life impossible.  

The arctic is much less inimical to life. No doubt, it is quite cold winter here. Miles upon miles of the sea is covered with a sheet of ice which is sometimes around 100 feet in thickness. But the cold becomes less serve due to the presence of sea-water under this sheet of ice. And when summer is comes, the Arctic warms up and this warming up gives life a chance. In these summer months many kinds of plants and flowers appear in the Arctic.   

The land formation of the Arctic is also different from that of the Antarctic. The Arctic is mostly flat and open. The Antarctic is spiny and mountainous. The valleys are all bare and wind-swept. The highest mountain here is mountain Erebus, which rises abut 13,000 feet above the sea-level.

There is another point of difference. When the North Pole tips towards the sun, it is summer in the northern regions of the world and winter in the southern regions. Six months later, it is the turn of the South Pole to lean towards the sun. Then it is summer in the southern parts and winter in the northern ones.