Someone said .............?

Question

My friends and I were having a discussion, and someone said that in Antartica they have six months of daylight without night, and six months of moonlight without the sun ever showing up. Is it true

Answer 1

This is true, though is more gradual than just sudden darkness. Its because the earth's axis is tilted slightly at an angle from the sun. You can demonstrate this easily by pushing a skewer through an orange from top to bottom . Now, in a dark or dimly lit room, turn on a lamp, hold the orange on the skewer up close to the lamp with the skewer pointing upwards. Now tilt the skewer so that the lower end is closer to the lamp. This represents the earth with the sun shining on it and you can clearly see that the top of the orange,is darker than the bottom. If you rotate the orange by turning the skewer, you will get a fair idea of what happens as the earth rotates each day. You will see that though the mddle bit of the orange goes through light and dark phases (day and night) the top and bottom don't change so much. The nearer you are to the North or South pole, the longer the day or night will be. If you move the orange.to the other side of the lamp,representing the earths orbit of the sun during six months of a year, keeping the skewer at the same angle and in the same direction, you will see that the opposite happens. the long days will turn into long nights and vice versa. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The maximum that I have read was two weeks, but It can occur because of the of the unique, environmental surroundings It is said that outside the quarters, even a small skin exposed to the air- would freeze within seconds; that even if there was a heater in the snowmobile, the temperature is still - 40 degrees C.