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Melissa Smith
L&S 125 Time
Homework / Quiz 2
04 February 2015
Explain in one paragraph why there are seasons.
1. The seasons occur on Earth because of the tilt of our planet on its axis- Earth just
doesnt stand up very straight. One theory for this is that when the Earth was very
young it was impacted by something large enough (Theia) to knock it off-kilter, so it
leans over a little bit: 23.5 degrees to be exact (although this is changing and every
13,000 years the seasons reverse hemispheres). This tilt causes uneven heating of
our planet by the Sun. Other reasons are that the North Pole always points in the
same direction and the Earth revolves around the Sun. What this means is that as
the Earth orbits the Sun, because the tilted axis is always pointed in the same
direction, in Summer the Earth is tilting towards the Sun for one half of the year,
and in Winter the Earth is tilting away form the Sun for the other half of the year.
Whichever hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun experiences more energy and
warms up and the opposite is true of the hemisphere that is tilted away from the
Sun- it receives less energy and cools down. Even though the Earths poles are
always tilted in the same direction in space (the North Pole points towards the North

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Star, and the South Pole points towards the constellation of Octans) sometimes it is
the North Pole tilting toward the Sun (in June) and sometimes it is the South Pole
(December) due to its orbit. So in December it is Summer south of the equator
because the Sun is shining directly on that hemisphere. The Sun is concurrently
shining indirectly on the Northern Hemisphere in December causing Winter. In
March it is Fall in the Southern Hemisphere and Spring north of the equator because
the Sun shines equally on both hemispheres. In June the Sun is shining indirectly
south of the equator so it is Winter, and because the Sun shines directly in the
Northern Hemisphere it is Summer. So in September you have a similar situation to
March, where the Sun shines equally on both the Southern and Northern
Hemispheres, but this time you have Spring to the south and Fall to the north. It is
not the case that Earths lopsided orbit causes the seasons because the difference
in the distance from the Earth to the Sun (perihelion=closest and aphelion=farthest)
isnt much relative to the entire difference. Besides, aphelion is in July and perihelion
is in January so for those of us north of the equator that wouldn't make much sense,
although this distance does effect the severity of the seasons: the Southern
Hemispheres Summer is when the Earth is closest to the Sun and their winter when
the Earth is furthest.
Works Cited

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"What Causes the Seasons?" :: NASA's The Space Place. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Feb.
2015. <http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/seasons/en/>.
"Why Are There Seasons?" The Weather Channel. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.weather.com/news/why-are-there-seasons-20130930>.
"Why Are There Seasons?" Universe Today. N.p., 23 Sept. 2013. Web. 04 Feb. 2015.
<http://www.universetoday.com/75843/why-are-there-seasons/>.
"Why Do We Have Seasons?" Why Do We Have Seasons? N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Feb.
2015. <http://resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/seasons.htm>.

Describe in one or two paragraphs an experiment that can verify that the Earth is
rotating on its axis (as opposed to the sky rotating around us). Terrestrial experiments
only, please; no spaceflight allowed!

2. In class we discussed an experiment where you would drop balls of different sizes
and compositions to determine the velocity of falling objects with relation to their mass.
Galileo was supposed to have done this from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You could also
drop balls to determine that the Earths surface has a velocity by measuring the
deviation of the balls on impact, adjusting for other forces such as wind direction. Isaac
Newton suggested this experiment and predicted the deviation would be to the east, and
Robert Hooke corrected the theory that it would be to the southeast. Hooke did drop the
balls that showed a deviation to the southeast but the magnitude differed. Giovanni
Guglielmini repeated Hookes experiment from the tower of Bologna, however, his

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measurements and calculated deviation did not agree. Johann Benzenberg once again
repeated the experiment from the spire of St. Michaels church, and noted a deviation to
the southeast. Then Benzenberg repeated his experiment in a mine shaft and the
deviation was only 1/12th off of mathematician Carl Gausss predicted value. E. H. Hall
also conducted this experiment at Harvard University and found a deviation to the east
and to the south. Constraints on this method include advanced enough mathematics
and the corresponding physics as well as accurate measurement devices.
The other way to experimentally verify that the Earth is rotating on its axis would
be to observe a pendulum. French physicist Leon Foucault ran this experiment with a 60
meter long pendulum hanging from the ceiling of the Pantheon in Paris. Each swing of
the pendulum deviated to the right and it never retraced its path. This showed that the
floor of the Pantheon was moving under the pendulum, and by extension, the surface of
the Earth was moving in the sky. A pendulum not subject to any other forces will swing
in a straight line forever. If the sky was rotating around the Earth, the pendulum would
retrace its path. But a pendulum on a rotating planet will be affected by that rotation.
Depending on where the pendulum was located, the effect would take different amounts
of time to be visible, but the rotation of the pendulum rotates at the exact rate that youd
expect if the Earth rotated once per day regardless of latitude. At the North or South
Pole, the plane of swing of a pendulum remains fixed relative to masses in the distant

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universe so at the North Pole a pendulum completes a clockwise rotation in one day
and at the South Pole it completes it counterclockwise. At the equator, the plane of
swing is fixed relative to Earth. The angular speed is measured in clockwise degrees
per sidereal day and is proportional to the sine of the latitude. If you use a gyroscope in
conjunction with a pendulum to track the stars, the rotation of the Earth can be
demonstrated without dependence on latitude. A Foucault pendulum requires precise
construction and an initial launch free of unwanted motion. The pattern that such a
Foucault Pendulum traces is an 11 point star with a circle in the middle. The underlying
system is a massless particle constrained to remain on a rotating plane which is inclined
with respect to the axis of rotation of the Earth.
Works Cited
"But It Moves! How We Know the Earth Rotates." Starts With A Bang. N.p., n.d. Web. 04
Feb. 2015. <http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/09/17/but-it-moves-how-weknow-the-e/>.
"Foucault Pendulum." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum>.
"LHS GEMS, Earth Rotates?" LHS GEMS, Earth Rotates? N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb.
2015. <http://lhsgems.org/rotates.html>.