Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Reason for the seasons

Today in science we made a very interesting experiment.The problem was "How does the tilt of the earth'axis affect the light received by earth as it revolves around the sun?". For this experiment we used a phoneboard sphere on a stick with a toothpick on the sphere and a small lamptorch pointing on the phoneboard, we finally used a small gided transparent sheet of plastic. The phoneboard stick was putten into a 23 degree angle and was suppose to represent the earth, the toothpick represented buildings, trees, mountains or other things on earth and the flashlight represented the Sun, the sheet was only used for us to see the amount of sdirect and undirect sunlight on earth. Throughout the experiment we made the sphere rotate, the rotation represented the rotation of the earth, or one earth year. When the shere was closer to the sun it meant that it was summer and when it was the farthest from the sun it meant that it was winter. During this experiment we learned many things as, the shadow in the summer is bigger because there is more direct light on objects.We also saw that the squares ( made by the grided transparent sheet) are the most normal on the equator wich means that there is the most direct sun light. We also discovered why the poles only get few hours of day each day while the countries on the eqautor only have few hours of night each day and that's because the poles get no direct sunlight , while the equator gets almost only direct sunlight.I also learned that...In the summer the grid squares are keeping there shape squared on the equator and therefor the equator never has winter, most of the heat is directed foward.In summer the Grids squares are spread out on the poles, they are rectangular/irregular shaped, there for they only have winter all year long/only a light heat is directed on them.As the earth rotates, because it s tilted, when there is light on the south pole therefor north pole has less sun light and when there is a lot of. Light on the north poles there is much less light on the south pole. When it is summer there is more light on the north poleand when it is winter there is more light the south pole.
By making this expereriment and looking at all of the information we got from it, we concluded that if there was no tilt there would only be autumn and spring,there wouldn't be any extreme as summer and winter.

1 comment:

  1. Good introduction to the activity we did during class.

    Remember that a rotation is the Earth's day and night and the revolution of the Earth is the year.

    Also, remember that the Earth does not get closer to the sun, but it is tilted towards the sun and tilted away from it.

    Good conclusions. You are right that there is more direct light in the summer and not in the winter. The squares did get more rectangular.

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