Wednesday, November 06, 2013

How, exactly, does the Earth's tilt cause the seasons?


Different individuals on the autism spectrum are impacted in different ways. The one area in which I am severely impaired is spatial perception. I do not have good intuition in this area and I have real difficulty reasoning myself through spatial transformations. People will give me directions to a destination and say "You can't miss it!" Unfortunately, my response is going to be "Oh yes, I can!" Ever since I first learned about the Earth's tilt in elementary school, I have been aware that Earth's seasons are somehow related to the tilt of the Earth. Yet, until today, I have never been able to understand how, in reality, the tilt brings about the change in seasons as the Earth rotates around the sun. I have never doubted the truth of this explanation and never suspected that there was some conspiracy going on to mislead the population. I just didn't understand what was going on. I have tried to read a number of descriptions and observed numerous animations. Until today, I still ended up walking away without understanding the explanation. However, after watching this lecture, I finally understand (sort of, at least): https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/earth-history-topic/earth-title-topic/v/how-earth-s-tilt-causes-seasons .

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