How does the earth tilt?

Question

I can not figure out HOW the Earth tilts!

Answer 1

No one knows for certain 'why' Earth tilts about 23-degrees. Billions of years ago a Mars-sized object impacted and could conceivably have knocked our planet out of whack. To some extent the tilt could be the result of Earth's slowing rotation too, kind of like a top wobbles when it begins slowing.

Answer 2

What do you mean, how?
The earth is a large ball spinning on its axis in space. Think of a child's top, only the earth isn't sitting on the floor.
The "tilt" refers to the fact that the axis the earth is spinning on is not completely upright compared to the orbit around the sun, its tipped over 23 degrees or so.

Okay - think of a pizza box with a light at the centre. That's the plane of earth's orbit around the sun.
Take a tennis ball and push a pencil through it so it sticks out the top and bottom - that's the earth's axis.
Now - stand the tennis ball on the pencil in the pizza box.
If the pencil is straight up and down, that would be the same as the earth's tilt of 0. Now, without moving it, just tip the pencil over a bit towards the light (about half as far as you would to make the pencil horizontal) and that represents the earth's current tilt.

Now - next level.
If you move the tennis ball in a circle around the pizza box without changing the angle of the pencil compared to the light, you get an idea of how the earth's tilt affects seasons - some times the top of the tennis ball gets more light than the bottom, at the other side of the pizza box it gets less light than the bottom.

Answer 3

Hi. The Earths' axis is tilted from the perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic (the suns' apparent path among the stars during the year ) by 23.45 degrees .This is caused by the Earth slowly moving up from the Equator (0 degrees,latitude) to the Tropic of Cancer (23.45 degrees latitude north)and down again crossing the Equator until it reaches the Tropic of Capricorn (23.45 degrees latitude south) Then it starts to move up again .
The Sun crosses the Equator twice a year when day and night hours are the same (known as the Equinox, about 21 March and 22 September.) When the Sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn (known as the "Solstice" about 21June and 22 December) the Sun is farthest from the Equator.
I hope that makes a bit of sense for you.
Cheers.

Answer 4

okay now i will really tell you why the earth tilts

the earth tilts because of the moon. only because of the moons gravity we are still alive.

the moons moving father and father away from the earth, the estimate is that it is moving about 1.25cm a year. since the gravitational pull affects the tilt of the earth there is no constant number so the now earth is tilting 23 deg maybe 100000 years later it might change. did you know the Sahara desert formed because the tilt of the earth changed by 1 degree.

so moons gravitational pull affects the earth tilt

did you know that mars a planet without a moon constantly wobbles on its axis, the north and south pole of mars sometimes face east and west because there is no preset tilt for it to rotate.

Answer 5

The earth is like a small marble inside an endless bottomless topless sideless tank of water. To you it appears it is tilting but in all actuality there is no such thing as up or down left or right. The earth tilts because the gravitational force grabs onto a certain area and pulls it along. Roll a ball around something what would it look like if it was in midair. It would look like it was tilting whilecircling the object correct.

Answer 6

The Earth tilts on it's axis.

Answer 7

To percieve something as tilting you have to be comparing it to something else. In this case the earth tilts in relation to the sun. So we always have one pole dark and the other light.

Answer 8

Day/night cycles might selection greater desirable than they do. The 'polar' ('hour of darkness sunlight') factors may be larger. Wind and climate activities may be superb. center heating as a results of tidal forces may be greater desirable, (bigger vulcanism), and the Moon may be drawing close particularly than receding. That adequate?

Answer 9

On its axis! lol

Answer 10

who cares as long as it does