It's Like Night and Day   The Earth is a sphere that rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. As the Earth spins, you see the sun come up at dawn. The Earth continues to spin and it looks like the sun is moving across the sky from east to west. Finally, the sun "sets" in the west and goes out of view. Then it is night. The Earth keeps spinning, and soon, it's daybreak again.
Long ago, people thought the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around the Earth.

 

Shadow Tag Long before there were watches and clocks, people figured out how to tell what time of day it was by the sun's shadow. In the morning, when the sun is low in the sky, upright objects cast a long shadow. As the sun rises in the sky, the shadow gets shorter and shorter until there is little or no shadow at noon. As the sun sets in the west, the shadow grows again, only on the opposite side of the object.

In Hawai'i the day when the sun shines directly overhead so there is no shadow is called "Lahaina Noon." Lahaina means "fierce sun" in Hawaiian. Have you been to Lahaina, Maui?

'Tis the Season . . . The Earth is tilted on its axis, and this tilt causes the seasons. The hemisphere that is tilted toward the sun has their summer season and long daylight hours. As the Earth revolves around the sun, the daylight hours get shorter and winter begins as the hemisphere becomes the one tilted away from the sun.
Did you know that the closer you are to the equator, the less change there is in day length and seasons? It's like summer all year long in Hawai'i, with only a slight change in day length.

Click here to make your own Sun Dial