Reasons For The Seasons
By Tony Angelini
Essay
People have wondered what causes day and night. The true answer is the Earth is constantly spinning on it axis, allowing the sun to shine on diffrent areas of the Earth, at diffrent times of the day creating daytime. When the Sun is not shining on a specific area of the Earth, it is nighttime. Since the Sun does not hit all of the Earth at the same time, it is daytime in some parts of the world, while it is nighttime in others. The Earth rotates about an imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles of the planet. This line is called the axis of rotation. The Earth rotates once each day (approximately 24 hours). The Earth revolves around the Sun once every 365 days. The two reasons why we have seasons is because we revolve around the sun and the Earth is tilted. We have the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere and there seasons are always opposite from each other. Every part of the world has seasons. Since Earth has a tilt 23.5°, as we revolve around the Sun, certain parts of the world will be closer or farther at any time.The equatorial/tropical regions have the least "range" between seasons, while the poles have the most "range," everyone has seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. All four. The difference in the length of the days in summer and winter are that in summer the days our longer, and in winter the days are shorter. We have two solstices winter and summer. The winter solstices is on Dec. 21st and the summer solstices is on Aug. 21st. We also have fall and spring equinoxes which are when the days are the same length in time. The Spring equinoxes occur March 21st. The Fall equinoxes occur Sep. 21st. The North Pole receives 24 hours of daylight in summer same as the south pole because the sun appears to rotate around the Poles at the same declination angle in the sky during their summer seasons. On the Equator, the duration of daylight is not exactly 12 hours all the year round, due to the angle of the earth in relation to the sun. If The Earth weren't tilted on its axis, there would be no seasons.
Questions
- If Earth's axis was tilted significantly more than it is, the seasonal changes in weather and length of daylight would be far greater than they currently are. Summers and winter weather would be more extreme.
- Yes, for example globle warming because it is heating the world up from all the towic waste we disperse.
- We would only have one season which would be very hot.
- It depends on where the sun is located in the sky.
- Becuse they adapt to the climate changes going on around them.
- I belive that we would have shorter days and shorter seasons.