7 CONSEQUENCES OF THE ROTATION OF THE EARTH - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The consequences of the rotation of the earth are presented at an environmental, climatological, terrestrial and physical level, shaping the lives of each and every one of the people who inhabit planet earth.

It should be noted that the earth is in constant motion, moving slowly with the rest of the solar system, the rotational movement being one of the main movements that affect daily life.

The rotation movement was discovered in 1543 by the Polish astronomer Nicolás Copernicus, as he explained in his great work The Book of the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.

In his book he explains the constant movement that the earth makes when it rotates on its own earth axis from west to east. In making this movement, the earth makes a complete revolution around an ideal axis that passes through the poles, creating the impression that the sky is rotating around the planet.

With the development of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus it was discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, the latter being the center of the universe. As a result of this discovery, the two main terrestrial movements, namely rotation and translation, became known.

Thanks to the movement of the Earth, one area remains illuminated (day) while the other is at night. Source: Pixabay.

Although the rotation movement is in charge of determining the days and nights, it is the translation movement, the one that the earth makes when rotating around the sun driven by gravitation, the one in charge of determining the seasons of the year and their duration.

The rotational movement is vital for the existence and maintenance of life on the planet.

If stopped, everything that was not attached to the surface would fly off at a speed of approximately 1600 km per hour creating strong winds of the magnitude of a nuclear explosion and producing tsunamis and lasting 365 days today, where six months would be extremely hot and the remaining six freezers.

In addition to this, the magnetic fields would disappear, causing the surface to be exposed to cosmic rays. That is why this movement can be considered one of the most important that the earth performs on a daily basis.

Environmental consequences of the movement of the Earth's rotation

The succession of day and night

It takes the earth 24 hours, namely a solar day, to make each turn. It is thanks to this movement that there are days and nights, and when the rotation from west to east occurs, the sun can be seen rising every day in the east and setting in the west.

As the earth has a spherical shape, its surface cannot be reached by the sun's rays at the same time, hence, while one area is illuminated, the opposite one will be dark, and it is the rotational movement that is the main responsible for it..

Due to this movement, half the globe is illuminated and the other half is dark.

The succession of days and nights influences the human being by establishing their periods of activity and rest depending on the area in which they are, namely east or west.

Similarly, movement affects the way of life of animals and the cycles of plants.

Determination of time and time differences

As the earth spends 24 hours turning on its same axis moving from west to east, that is why in the eastern hemisphere it dawns and last night earlier than in the western one, hence the time of a place depends on the different points of the earth's surface through which the earth moves daily around its axis of rotation.

The rotational movement establishes the time zone system, which consists of a division of the day into hours for the whole world based on the zero meridian or Greenwich meridian.

Time zones or time zones are each of the 24 parts into which the earth is divided into meridians, each time zone representing an hour of the day, with time differences between each zone.

Earth rotation allows setting a legal time that helps to adjust the time of the globe, helping people to organize themselves temporarily, especially when traveling or establishing personal and business relationships with other countries.

Climatic consequences

Variation of temperatures

Due to the consequence of the succession of day and night, the earth's surface receives a greater amount of solar radiation during the day, which generates higher temperatures during the day than at night.

Earthly consequences

Shape of the earth

By making a constant rotational movement, the earth generates a centrifugal force, which is responsible for the current structure of the earth, making it a bit flattened at its north and south poles, and bulging in the middle, that is, at its equatorial zone.

The rotational movement has caused the earth to acquire the shape of a flattened rotational ellipsoid, namely a geoid.

Establishment of the cardinal points

Although the earth moves in relation to an imaginary terrestrial axis, it has been precisely this axis that has created the imaginary arrangement in the plane of the well-known cardinal points: north, south, east and west.

Physical consequences

Deflection of bodies in their free fall

Taking into consideration that objects are attracted by the force of gravity towards the center of the earth following a linear trajectory when falling, it is due to the movement of the earth's rotation that these objects apparently deviate towards the east when falling.

Deflection of winds and ocean currents

The earth rotates with different speeds at different points on the surface, moving faster at the Equator and much slower at the poles, hence the winds and ocean currents move from one latitude to another with a slight deviation towards the this resembling the movement of cyclones.

The rotational movement generates the well-known "Coriolis effect", one of the most interesting phenomena that occurs on earth.

This effect is the force to which all the fluids on the planet are subject, causing air masses and oceans to deviate in predictable directions.

It is thanks to this effect that rivers, oceans and winds drift to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere. A fundamental effect within the field of meteorology, aeronautics and aviation.

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