Summer (Winter) Solstice Science Experiment

[DublinBass]

With today being the Summer (Winter) Solstice and all I thought I might try a worldly science experiment (if I can get some help from the tMPers).

The idea is to compare the summer (or winter if you're from Oz) solstice in various places. All I need is your location, latitude and amount of sunlight you got on June 20th or 21st.

Columbus, OH
40.0 N
15:01 hrs of sunlight

 

[Singapore Northern Lass]

Sorry that's a bit technical for me, when my hubby gets in from work I shall try to find out for you though, just one question, I thought a solstice was always on the 21st, June or December wherever you are in the world so why the 20th also?

 

[DublinBass]

The summer solstice (for the northern hemispherers) is tecnically when the day when the north pole is tilted closest to the sun (about a 23.5 deg angle). Well that moment happened at around 9:00 pm EST today (for me) the 20th of June for England that would be 2:00 am the 21st of June (and in fact, 9:00 am in singapore).

Often the local newspaper will have sunrise/sunset times (which is where I found mine).

It's an interesting little bit of trivia that Columbus fall right on the 40 N latitude line which is probably on of two latitudes I know off of the top of my head (the other being "the 49th parallel" US/Canada border and nice orchestra/ brass band piece by Vaugh Williams.)

 

[Accidental]

Farnham, UK
51:11 N
16.36 hrs of sunlight.

Have just discovered that the local sunrise/sunset times are exactly the same from 20th - 24th June - more longest week than longest day :? And what the stats don't show is, yesterday the sun hid behind clouds for approx. 10 hours and it rained instead!

(If it helps anyone, MULTIMAP gives the longitude for your postcode)

 

[Okiedokie of Oz]

Next time, ask earlier....it's bedtime now!!! I didn't exactly watch the official times!!

 

[Loop]

May diary indecates that it rose at 0431 and will set at 2206 so that would kinda make it 17h 20min give or take a few mintues. In Hull anyway.

 

[bigmamabadger]

The idea is to compare the summer (or winter if you're from Oz) solstice in various places. All I need is your location, latitude and amount of sunlight you got on June 20th or 21st.

Do you mean sunlight or daylight? Daylight's easy, whatever sunrise/sunset occurs. Sunlight's more difficult and I think it add up to about 4 hours in my case.
bmb
Northwich, UK, 53 16n 2 30w

 

[DublinBass]

Would have like to get a bit more data (had to throw in the knows with the equator and arctic circle), but somewhat interesting none the less how quickly (latitude-wise) those extra hours of daylight pile up as you head far north.

 

[neiltwist]

I think if you try it again, but plot modulus(daylight hours-12) on the y axis, you should get what can be approximated to be a nice quadratic which is very much related to the shape of the earth's surface.

(send me the data over and I'll do a nice little schematic in matlab.)

 

[lynchie]

all i can tell you is that for the last few days the sun has been coming up far too early, and my curtains are still ridiculously thin... :evil:

 

[DublinBass]

I think if you try it again, but plot modulus(daylight hours-12) on the y axis, you should get what can be approximated to be a nice quadratic which is very much related to the shape of the earth's surface.

(send me the data over and I'll do a nice little schematic in matlab.)

I was thinking that with the earth being circular, the graph resembles the tangent function. Regardless, I'll be interested to see how your data comes out

 

[neiltwist]

actually, due to me being really quite thick until I've had a few pints, you are correct I think. I will do the stuff now though.

 

[neiltwist]

ok, I'm hungry, after lunch!

 

[bruceg]

Kirkcaldy: 56.1214 N 17h40m daylight

 

[neiltwist]

hmmm, some quite interesting results here, a cubic seems to fit nicely at the moment, but not sure why. and also thinking about it, there should be an angle offset to accompany the earth's tiltedness.

well, green is the cubic, and red is a tangent function, and the blue is the actual data. (click for a larger version)

 

[DublinBass]

Hmmm..... :?

 

[neiltwist]

hmmm indeed

 

[Keppler]

modulus?

 

[neiltwist]

I was getting all confused, or if you were asking what it is, then it's the 'absolute value', ie, discard any minus signs.

 

[DublinBass]

I did some research online and the latitud/ daylight relationship appears to best be describe as a parametric equation with mutiple trig functions...Its not pretty :shock: