The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1914-05-21
Peculiarities of the Earth.

On account of the form of the
earth and it's various motions there
are several little facts of more or less
interest connected Herewith. For
instance, a man at the North Pole
weighs more than he does at the
equator, a man down in a mine
weighs less than he does on the sur
face of the earth, man up in bal
loon weighs less than he does at the
surface of the earth. The reason why
a loss of weight occurs in going from
the pole to the equator is because the
earth swells out around it's middle
and person thus goes further from
the centre in going that way; also
loss of weight is occasioned by the
rotation of the earth on its axis
for a person at the equator tends
to fly off from the surface just as
particle of mud tends to fly off of
rotating buggy wheel. No tendency
of this kind is evident at the pole
for the pole of course is on the axis
and there is very slight rotation
there. To understand this remem-
Der that the earth is about twenty
i've thousand miles around at the
equator. AS the earth rotates once
in twenty-four hours it can be readi-
ly seen that person residing on the
equator is travelling at the great
speed of over thousand miles an
hour toward the east. Now a per-
son near the pole would also go
around once in twenty-four hours,
but the distance around the pole
would be very small, so that the speed
would be practically zero and at the
pole would be zero. If it were pos
sible to make the earth rotate about
eighteen times faster than it does
at present a very peculiar state OF al
fairs would exist. For things at. the
equator would not weigh anything
a person could jump up into the air
and stay there for quite time before
coming back down, in fact unless he
was very careful when he jumped,
he would go so high that he might
leave the earth for awhile. People
at the poles, however, would weigh
the same as before, so if man walk
ed from the pole to the equator he
would constantly get lighter and
lighter and he would find that he
could carry more things and be less
fatigued the further along he got to
the equator. At the equator he could
lift a house and there he would find
labor cheap-so, if he were laborer,
he would probably go back.
Besides it's rotation around it's own
axis the earth revolves around the
sun once a year. The distance around
the sun is about half a billion miles,
so the speed of the earth through
space relative to the sun is that divid-
ed by the number of hours in year,
which makes it about $4,000 miles
an hour. This is the average speed,
but the speed changes with the sea-
sons. When the earth is nearest to
the sun the speed is greatest and ex-
ceeds the above figure; when farther
awav is less. Now it would seem
that when we are closer to the sun
we should have summer time. This
is not the case, as the winter for the
Northern Hemisphere is when the
earth is closest the sun. Our summer
is when we are furthest from the
sun. Not so is this for the South
ern Hemisphere-the South Amerl-
cans have their summer when they
are nearest the sun and consequent
lv their summer is warmer than ours,
this cause alone considered. Their
winter is also colder. The cause OF
the seasons, however, is not the close
ness to the sun but the angle the
suns rays make with the surface OF
the earth. The earth is tilted so that
the whole Northern Hemisphere is
tilted away from the sun during the
winter and the Southern toward it.
This fact will be seen when we re-
member that the sun is very far to
the south of the zenith at midday
in winter, and climbs closer and
closer as spring approaches. The
reason why this fitting causes win
ter may be seen from very simple
experiment. A sheet of paper held
directly in front Of a lamp will get
? certain amount of light on every
square inch. If now the paper be
tilted, less and less light falls on
every square inch, until when the
edge of the paper is presented to the