Listen to the explanation and fill in the blanks with the following words:
SKY
EQUATOR
POLES
EQUINOX
CANCER
SEASONS
DEGREES
HEMISPHERE
DECEMBER
PLANET
HOURS
TEMPERATURE
CAPRICORN
SOLSTICE
CHANGES
CIRCLE
LINES
WEATHER
DARKNESS
NIGHT
WHY DOES THE EARTH HAVE SEASONS?
Hello, welcome to Videojug and a further look into ____________ Earth.
If the Earth was standing upright, every day would be twelve hours long and every
month would be the same _______________.
There would be no winter and no summer.
But the Earth is not standing straight up. It is tilted slightly, about 23 and a half
_____________ from true north and south.
It is this tilt that causes the ______________ and not the distance from the Earth to the
Sun.
As the Earth travels around the Sun, in June the northern part of the Earth is leaning
closer to the Sun causing longer days and warmer ____________.
Likewise, during ____________, the southern part is tilted towards the Sun, giving that
part of the Earth longer days and warmer weather.
At the north and south _______________, this tilt causes the Sun to stay on the sky
twenty-four hours a day during the summer. It doesn’t even set in the middle of the
______________.
The opposite happens in the winter. The Sun never rises at the poles, meaning that they
are in constant _______________. We call these days when the Earth is at its most
extreme the solstice.
For the northern ________________ the summer solstice occurs on June 21st and the
winter solstice on December 21st. So between these two dates there must be a period
when the Earth is equal right across the planet. These days are called the
______________ and occur on march 21st and on september 21st each year.
We have drawn imaginary ____________ running around the Earth. At the center we
call it the ___________. This is half way between the north and the south poles.
On both equinoxes, the Sun will be directly overhead here.
At 23.5 degrees north we have a line called the tropic of ______________. And at 23.5
degrees south we have another one, the tropic of ________________. It is at these
points that the Sun will be directly overhead on the solstice.
The part between these two lines is known as the tropics as the Sun is always high in the
_____________ and so they do not have noticeable seasonal differences. It is only
above these lines that the seasonal ______________ are more prevalent.
Further north is the line called Arctic ______________. It is at this line that the Sun
does not rise on December 21st, the winter solstice. And does not set on June 21st, the
summer _______________. The southern hemisphere has the Antarctic Circle, where
the opposite is true.
But funnily enough, regardless of where you stand on the Earth, throughout the year
every part of the Earth receives exactly the same amount of daylight ____________. It’s
just a bit warmer nearer the equator. So pick your holiday dates carefully.