NOTES TOPIC THREE: MOVEMENTS OF THE EARTH IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

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CHAPTER 3: MOVEMENT OF THE EARTH IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The earth is in motion all the time. One does not feel this motion because one moves with it, like all other planets, the earth has two motions known as: -

(a) Rotation
(b) Revolution

ROTATION
Rotation is the spinning of a body on its axis.
 Earth’s rotation: is a spinning of the earth on its axis.
 Axis of the earth is an imaginary line joining the North and South poles through the centre
 The earth axis is tilled making an angle of 23.5 from the perpendicular
 The earth rotates on its axis in an anticlockwise direction from west to east through 360◦ in 24 hours.
 This means that the earth takes 1 hour to rotate through 15o which is equal to 4 minutes for every 1o
 The earth rotation changes from no movement at the poles to very fast movement at the equator
 At the equator every point of the earth surface moves eastwards at about 1600km/hr.
 We do not feel the movement because we move with the earth movement at a constant speed.
 At latitude 40o the speed is about 1280km/hr. in the meantime at the poles the speed is 0km/hr.

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