Earth is the only planet known to support life and that’s what makes Earth quite a fascinating topic to research upon. There are many interesting facts about earth like rotation on its axis, the different types of seasons and also a number of species of flora and fauna that exist here, which makes earth a very fascinating thing to study. Apart from all these facts, there is one more fact and that is why earth experience day and night.
Have you wondered about why that happens? Well, let’s check out this phenomenon.
There are many places on earth which experience night and darkness when other areas are followed by bright daylight. The correct explanation for days and nights lies in the concept of rotation of the earth. At a certain point of time half of the surface of the earth experiences bright sunlight constituted as day and rest half remain in the dark constituting night.
As earth is rotating continuously, so the area facing sunlight will face darkness after sometime and the same goes for the other part and the cycle continues. If the earth’s axis was perpendicular, then both part used to face an equal amount of 12 hours day and 12 hours night, but as earth axis is tilted it makes an unequal distribution of sunlight as sometimes the northern hemisphere is more exposed to the sun than the southern hemisphere and vice versa.
In places like North Pole and South Pole, there are times when the sun never sets or never rises. There are times when the northern and southern hemisphere experience longest days called as solstices. There are two solstices one is called summer solstices and other is winter solstices. All types of changes in the day and night hours is caused by the rotation of the earth.
