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{{dabSpangled Banner]]" | official_languages = None at the federal level;
English de facto | capitath. The state of Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, southwest of the North American mainland. ted near the Mojave Desert. North of the Great Basin and east of the Cascades in the Northwest is the Columbia River Plateau, a large igneous province shaped by one of the largest flood basalts ever to appear on Earth. It is marked by dark black rocks. Surrounding the Four Corners region lies the Colorado Plateau, named after the Colorado River, which flows through it. The Plateau is generally high in elevation, has highly eroded sandstone, and is a blood red in some locations with many national parks, such as Arches, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Zion. West of the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada mountain range has Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the coterminous U.S. Along the Pacific coast, the Coast Ranges and the volcanic Cascade Range extend from north to south across the country. Alaska has numerous mountain ranges, including Mount McKinley (Denali), the highest peak in North America. Numerous volcanoes can be found throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands extending south and west of the Alaskan mainland. The Hawaiian islands are tropical, volcanic islands extending over 1,500 miles (2,400 km), and consisting of six larger islands and another dozen smaller ones that are inhabited.

The U.S. also has the world's highest quality fluorescent minerals and the most number of minerals found in any one location, in an area called the Franklin Furnace. Rock hunters the world over come to hunt for minerals, walk through actual fluorescent mineral mines, and visit mineral museums in Franklin and Ogdensburg, NJ.

The climate of the U.S. is as varied as its landscape. In northern Alaska, tundra and arctic conditions predominate, and the temperature has fallen as low as minus 80 °F (−62 °C). On the other end of the spectrum, Death Valley, California once reached 134 °F (56.7 °C); the second-highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

On average, the mountains of the western states receive the most snow and are among the snowiest places on Earth. The greatest annual snowfall level is at Mount Rainier, in Washington, at 692 inches (1,757.68 cm); the record there was 1,122 inches (2849.8 cm) in the winter of 1971–1972. Other places with significant snowfall outside the Cascade Range are the Wasatch Mountains, near the Great Salt Lake, and the Sierra Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. In the east, while snowfall does not approach western levels, the region near the Great Lakes and the mountains of the Northeast receive the most. Along the northwestern Pacific coast, rainfall is greater than anywhere else in the continental U.S., with Quinault Ranger in Washington having an average of 137.21 inches.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Over the same period, the group whose portion of the population grew by the most percentage points was those who claimed no religion, making up 8.2% of the adult population in 1990, but 14.2% in 2001. This group includes atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists and those who answered to the effect of "No religion". The number of those with no religion varies widely with location, reaching a high in Washington, at 25%, and the rest of the relatively agnostic western United States, and a low in North Dakota, at 3%, followed shortly by the Bible Belt.

One comprehensive study showed that in the U.S. women are generally more religious than men, with 42% identifying as "religious" and 36% as "somewhat religious," versus 31% and 41% for men, respectively. Younger Americans were twice as likely to choose "secular" than their older counterparts, at 14% and 7%, respectively. Among racial and ethnic groups, blacks had the highest religious figures, at 49% "religious" and 31% "somewhat religious"; Asians had the lowest numbers, at 28% "religious" and 34% "somewhat" religious.

Education

Education in the United States has been a state or local, not federal, responsibility. The Department of Education of the federal government, however, exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. Students are generally obliged to attend school starting with kindergarten, and ending with the 12th grade, which is normally completed at age 18, but many states may allow students to drop out as early as age 16. Besides public schools, parents may also choose to educate their own children at home or to send their children to parochial or private schools. After high school, students may choose to attend universities, either public or private. Public universities receive funding from the federal and state governments, as well as from other sources, but most students still have to pay student loans after graduation. Tuition at private universities is generally much higher than at public universities.

There are many competitive institutions of higher education in the United States, both private and public. The United States has 168 universities in the world's top 500, 17 of which are in the top 20. There are also many smaller universities and liberal arts colleges, and local community colleges of varying quality across the country with open admission policies.

The United States ranks 24th in the reading and science literacy as well as mathematical abilities of its high school students when compared with other developed nations. The United States also has a low literacy rate compared to other developed countries, with a reading literacy rate at 86 - 98% of the population over age 15. As for educational attainment, 27.2% of the population aged 25 and above have earned a bachelor's degree or higher, and 84.6% have graduated high school.

Health

The World Health Organization ranks the United States' health level 72nd among the world's nations. Infant mortality is 5 per 1,000; among developed nations, only Latvia ranks lower, at 6 per 1,000. However, this statistic is contested by some experts, because other nations may not define infant mortality as broadly as the United States. <ref>"U.S. gets poor grades for newborns' survival-v/usa/infousa/facts/factover/homepage.htm Portrait of the United States - Published by the United States Information Agency, September 1997.

• • CIA World Factbook Entry for United States
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1. Williams, Jack Each state's low temperature record, USA today, URL accessed 13 June, 2006.
2. Death-Valley.us, Weather Landmarks, Death Valley Weather Facts, URL accessed June 13, 2006.
3. Self-Described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 and 2001. U.S. Census Bureau's Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2006.
4. American Religious Identification Survey
5. American Religious Identification Survey
6. ARWU2005 Statistics by Shanghai Jiao Tong university. URL accessed on May 16, 2006
7. Programme for International Student Assessment 2003, URL accessed on July 11, 2006
8. A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century, U.S. Department of Education, 2003. Accessed 13 May 2006. 2% of the population still do not have basic literacy and 14% have Below Basic prose literacy.
9. "Educational attainment according to the US Census Bureau, 2003" (PDF). Retrieved 2006-08-01.
10. "Health system performance in all Member States" 1997. World Health Organization. Accessed 1 May 2006.

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