Fundamentally I know that the earth spins on an uneven axis and we orbit the sun but I don’t understand why the sun sets so early in winter and so late in summer when you’re closer to the North Pole.
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Take a look at this photo. The North pole is not in the sun. It should be in complete darkness all day. Meanwhile, the south poll is in the sun, so its light all day.
If you think about the equator as a slice, and each line of latitude as a slice. If you pick a random spot on the equator, a bit more than 50% is covered by sun, and the day length is a bit more than 12 hours.
The further north you go, the less of sunlight that is hitting any given latitude. The result is less daylight, and more hours of darkness, until it approaches zero at the north pole.
Basically, in Summer, the sunlight is more direct, and more light shines on your ‘slice’
Try make a mental picture (or actually do this): Take a ball, draw a dot on the top of it – this is your north pole – now go stand near a lamp.
If you keep the ball upright, the dot is right on the line between light and dark.
Now, because you know the Earth is tilted a bit, tilt the ball a little so that the dot is completely in the light. This, for the fictional people living around the dot, is summer.
Keep the ball exactly how it is and walk past the lamp so it’s now behind you. The dot should now face away from the lamp, and is completely in the dark. This, for the fictional people living around the dot, is winter.
Most countries in the northern hemisphere aren’t very close to the North Pole, so draw a new dot anywhere on the top half of the ball – this is your country.
Place your finger on the North Pole and spin the ball slowly around it. In your winter position, when your country is facing the lamp it’ll be closer to the line of light and dark than it is to where your finger is – if its closer to this line, it’ll cross the line quicker.
Keep your finger on the north pole and rotate the ball until your country is facing away from the lamp – it is now further away from the line of light and dark, so it’ll take a lot longer to cross the line.
Wrong way of looking at it. The day is not longer, still just a 24 hour day with different levels of daylight. The nearer to earths axes you get, the less distance you’re traveling circumference-wise as the earth spins. Because during certain seasons the poles face the sun more directly, and because you are rotating less of a distance than someone living on the equator, the variation in light/dark is less, thus, you have a week of either darkness or perpetual sunlight. Same reason why folks in the UK (relatively longitudinally north biased) has longer periods of darkness in winter.
Literally a function of where you live longitudinally.
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