Okay I know this is like 4th grade science or something, but I think with my stroke I just can’t seem to picture why the sun is “on” or “off” for most of the day up at the North Pole or down at South Pole, and yet at the equator days are very regular year ’round.
I keep picturing the Earth on its axis, but I just can’t seem to figure out how the sun shines differently at different latitudes.
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Don’t think of it as turning on or off. Think of it as a path the sun takes across the sky. At the equator, the sun rises in the east, follows an arc across the sky and then sets in the west. Pretty simple, right?
Imagine lying flat on the ground in your living room with a light directly above you. If you roll across the ground and keep your head facing straight, you’ll see something similar. The light will come into your view, travel across your view, then disappear on the other side.
Now imagine standing up directly underneath the light, looking up towards it. Spin around and you’ll notice that the light does little loops but always stays in sight.
This is basically what the Earth is doing. At the equator and on the spring and fall equinoxes, it’s like laying flat on the floor. At the poles during the summer, it’s more like standing up. During winter at the poles, it’d be like doing a headstand. As the year progress, the Earth is basically just shifting between those positions. The closer you are to the poles, the more pronounced the effect is. At the equator, it’s virtually non-existent.
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