What is a Feedback Mechanism?

Question

This is related to Geography. My teacher instructed us to give 2 examples, one a negative feedback and another positive feedback and we should provide diagrams. Anyone can help? thanks alot. Gbu

Answer 1

Population shifts can be both negative and positive feedback mechanisms.

Positive:  As more and more people move to a city, the city has more and more businesses and services to support the population, attracting more people to live in the city.

Negative:  As more and more people leave small towns, businesses and services shut down - fewer stores, fewer schools, causing more people to leave because of diminished opportunities

Answer 2

Answer . a toilet, ! it is a mechanism that depends on its relationship to an event causing instability, that in turn causes a reaction/process to occur, the toilet cistern is emptied and a lever is dropped, opening a valve that causes it to be refilled, when this lever is floated to the top on the ballcock it closes the inlet valve thus preventing overflow or overfilling of the cistern, hence a negative feedback, i.e. it is triggered by a fall in a systems status,

Other feedback mechanisms are temperature controls where the setting of a sensitive switch causes a heater to switch off when a certain temperature is reached, and come on again when it falls, a positive feedback , that occurs when a satisfactory level; is attained,

the business of being hungry is also a positive feedback that keeps us alive, and a negative one that tells us to stop when we are full up !

So is sleep, positive as a mechanism, and a host of other consequential behaviour determined by any situation that triggers a response...i.e. the "fight or flight" mechanism that causes us butterfllies in our stomachs, when we face a frightening or exciting

situation, i.e. our adrenalin is raised causing lower pain levels and faster heartbeats, less bleeding etc, allowing us to cope with danger with less risk to ourselves,

Nature has these as well, in global warming situations, the Earth starts to change, in an attempt to cool itself, what this result will be, no one knows yet, but many are guessing, what comes next may well be an ice age or a heatwave lasting for centuries, this concept, of the earth being a self regulating creature, like people and sweating, to make themselves cooler ( another form of feedback, as is shivering tro warm ourselves up ),  is known as the Gai ( pronounced "GUY- aah" , all one word ), hypotheseis, who knows what the real outcome is ?