What does the angle at which light from the sun strikes the earth have to with the temperate and polar regions

Answer 1

Everything. It's the main reason why these regions are different temperatures.

Draw a few horizontal lines above one another. Then draw a circle to the right of those lines, about the same height as your stack of lines.

Pretend these lines are rays of light from the sun. They're coming from so far away that they're essentially parallel. Now when your lines hit the circle, you may notice that the beams of light between lines cover a small area near the middle of your circle, but cover bigger areas near the top and bottom of your circle as your circle curves away from the sun.

This means that sunlight gets spread out over much larger areas when the angle of the light is not direct. That means less energy from the sun per area of land. So, equatorial regions get hot, polar regions get cold, and temperate is in between.

Answer 2

The amount of heat generated by light reflecting off a surface is proportianate to the angle at which it strikes the object in question.

Due to the fact that the northern and southern extremes on this planet are rounded to the point that the light reflects at a lower angle, or fails to reflect, causes them to gain less heat from the interaction (see 20 hour nights during alaskan winter) .

Furthermore, these regions spend less time per day reflecting light during certain parts of the year, which causes them to cool a considerable amount during thier "winter" season.

Light is heat in the sense that it causes atoms to become excited and start moving around. Atomic motion is what causes heat. Absolute zero is reached in environments that are absolutely devoid of all light energy. This is not naturally feasible in this universe as the light from surrounding stars will always heat matter up to some extent but the less light received the less heat you have.

As some people have stated before me alot of the light energy is absorbed by the longer distance of atmosphere that the light beams are passing through to reach the surface on these extremeties as well, which causes some of the light energy to be spent heating air.

Answer 3

Consider a flashlight that emits 100 watts of light. Arrange it normal to a flat surface to give 1 watt/cm^2 in the resulting illuminated circle. Now increasingly rotate the light at constant height so the circle spreads into an ellipse. The power is constant How does the power/area vary with angle of illumination?

What is the arriving power/area when the light is oriented parallel to the surface? What is cosine(90 degrees?).

Answer 4

The higher the angle, the less atmosphere you have to go through and the more energy actually gets to the surface to heat the ground or water.

Doug

Answer 5

Even without the atmosphere, sunlight is weaker which can be seen with two flashlights side by side, at extreme and right overhead angles.

Answer 6

the light goes through far more atmosphere at the poles than at the equator. So far less energy gets to the surface.

Answer 7

Well when you stand out side at noon the sun seems hot. stand out side at dusk the sun is at a lower angle it feel cooler then Right? its the same concept.