When is a day not a day?

[HalfAce]

we've presumably lost 12 hours (or there about) of time, why isn't night and day reversed?

Depending on the season of the year, for us it is!
(You ever read a newspaper (in natural light) outside at 2AM? - Or had to use your headlights to go home for lunch at noon?)

 

[sous2817]

Depending on the season of the year, for us it is!
(You ever read a newspaper (in natural light) outside at 2AM? - Or had to use your headlights to go home for lunch at noon?)

But isn't that more due to the tilt of the earth either towards the sun or away from the sun rather than the rotation point Alaska is in at the time (if that makes any sense). In the summer your tilted towards the sun so you have more daylight and in the Winter you're tilted away so you have less sun. That's what I always thought at least.

 

[Greg Truby]

But isn't that more due to the tilt of the earth either towards the sun or away from the sun rather than the rotation point ...

Yes, Dan's just cracking wise.

 

[HalfAce]

due to the tilt of the earth either towards the sun or away from the sun rather than the rotation point Alaska is in at the time (if that makes any sense). In the summer your tilted towards the sun so you have more daylight and in the Winter you're tilted away so you have less sun. That's what I always thought at least.

Yes, you're absolutely right. - Both you and Greg.
(How often do you hear that Greg???)

See, I'm just being a smart a$$...

 

[cornflakegirl]

Depending on the season of the year, for us it is!
(You ever read a newspaper (in natural light) outside at 2AM? - Or had to use your headlights to go home for lunch at noon?)

Yeah, that kind of puts my current whinging that it's pitch black here at 5pm into context!

 

[arkusM]

This is a great conversation.
What messes with my head is trying to put an analog process- rotations into a "digital" arbitrary framework - time. Sounds simple but wow the details are crazy. We humans wanted a nice calender with seasons repeating on predictable intervals, but our Gregorian calender has some months with 31 days, other with 30 and one with 28/29?? We want 24hrs in a day yet that does not work either...
We humans are so smart... we land a man on the moon but have complicated work arounds to get our clocks and calenders to work. LOL
"I am so smart, I am so smart, S-M-R-T.... Doh!"

Oh by the way the moon does rotate. It has to in order to stay facing the earth the whole time and to have gravity. It is a synchronous rotation.

 

[Atroxell]

arkus--you're right. I had this rolling through my head all day yesterday and last night, and something was trying to tell me that I missed something. It came to me about 3 AM (when thinking occurs for me) that I had botched my own attempt at explanation...

I kept mentally picturing the moon orbiting the Earth and trying to decipher why it looked wrong with respect to my post. Then it finally hit me that it has to rotate to keep the same face towards the Earth. It just does not visually rotate from our perspective. Ah, well. It sounded right when I wrote it...

Luckily for myself and everyone else, my business obligations do not include any Astronomy.

There are obviously many people out there who are much S-M-R-T-R than I. lol

 

[cornflakegirl]

Atroxell - don't apologise - it was your insight that made us realise we were talking rubbish!

The link that I posted said what you said - that the Earth rotates 365.25 + 1 times in a year - 365 relative to the sun + 1 in actually going round the sun. But we only see 365 of them as days.