Seasons Project Essay and Poster
Created by: Samantha Alley
Part I of Essay
The Earth’s rotation causes day and night. The Earth rotates once every 24 hours or once every day. A rotation is the Earth turning on its axis. A revolution is basically the Earth orbiting once around the Sun. The Earth takes 365 days for one revolution around the Sun. The two main reasons we have seasons are Earth’s revolution and Earth’s tilt on its axis. The Northern and Southern Hemispheres have opposite seasons, for example, when it is summer in the Northern hemisphere meaning it’s getting a lot of direct light, the Southern hemisphere is receiving a lot of indirect light making the Southern hemisphere experience winter. There are few places on Earth that do not experience seasons and those places are called the north and south poles. These places seem to be in eternal winter because I believe that the Earths tilt is not severe enough for these places to receive enough direct light to experience seasons. The summer days are longer because the hemisphere that is experiencing summer is receiving more direct light making it seem like day time for longer. Winter is the opposite, when a hemisphere is getting a lot of indirect light making it seem like nighttime for longer. The winter and summer solstices begin the seasons officially. The winter solstice is on December 21 and the summer solstice is on June 21. Spring and fall equinoxes begin spring and fall officially, it means that until the winter and summer solstices there will be equal days. The spring equinox is on March 21 and the fall equinox is on September 21. During summer in the north and south poles experience days that have 14-15 hours of daylight and 9-10 hours of nighttime. The days at the equator have 16 to 17 hours of daylight because the Earths tilt causes this area to have some type of light direct or indirect. If the Earth did not have a tilted axis then the most likely the direct light would be always hitting the Equator region making it summer all of the time. In the regions between the Equator and the poles there would be eternal spring and fall. Finally, in the poles it would be winter eternally.