why does the sun go down earlier in the winter and much later in the summer?
In: Physics
Imagine you’re holding a light bulb in your left hand (it’s lit up and it’s our make-believe Sun).
In your right hand is an orange and we’ve stuck a thumbtack in the top of it (that’s our north pole… also that orange is Earth.) The orange has a thin, black line drawn around the center dividing it into two halves nicely.
Tilt the orange in your hand so that the thumbtack points *slightly* towards the light bulb. There is more light on the top of the orange (with thumbtack) than on the bottom of the orange (opposite the thumbtack).
Even as the orange rotates (always rotating it on it’s centerline, so that the thin, black line doesn’t appear to move) the side with the thumbtack stays more well lit than the opposite side.
The side with the thumbtack is experiencing summer while the other side is experiencing winter.
Now, don’t adjust the tilt of the orange but swap the orange and the lightbulb from one hand to the other. That represents the position of the Earth six months later. Now when you rotate the orange, the side with the thumbtack has less light than the side without it. The seasons have reversed.
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