What makes day and night video for kids

The side facing away is cooler and darker, and experiences night. Because the Earth is constantly spinning, the line between day and night is always moving around the planet. A day on Earth lasts 24 hours—that is how long it takes for the planet to spin around once.

As Earth rotates, the half that faces the sun experiences day. As Earth rotates, the half that faces away from the sun experiences night. In fact, the Earth is turning so that a new side faces the Sun. The Earth rotates around an imaginary line called the axis, which runs from the North Pole to the South Pole.

The side of the Earth facing away from the Sun, out towards space, is darker and colder nighttime. It takes just over days for the Earth to travel all the way around the Sun. We call the length of time the Earth's revolution around the Sun takes a year , but to make life easier, most years have days and every fourth year has days.

We call a year with days a leap year. The extra day is February 29th. The years and were leap years; and will also be leap years. The further you are from the equator, the longer a day will be in summer and the shorter it will be in winter. On the longest day of the year in London there are about 16 hours and 39 minutes of daylight, but in Edinburgh, miles north of London, there are 17 hours and 36 minutes of daylight.

This is because Edinburgh is further away from the equator than London is. To help us know where we are in the world, we also divide the world into Eastern and Western hemispheres.

All measurements of how far East and West places are are taken from this line. We call these measurements longitude.

The sun has travelled half way across the sky and still has half way to travel. For people living on the far side of the world, when it is midday in London, it will be the middle of the night for them. It is more useful for them to set their clocks by when the sun will be visible where they live than when it will be visible in London. Most time zones are set as an exact number of hours ahead of or behind the time in London. Most countries prefer to be in only one time zone.

That way all the schools and offices open and close at the same time and nobody gets confused. The USA is so big that it is in several time zones. On the far side of the world from Greenwich is the International Date Line. On the western side of the line the time is 12 hours ahead of London and on the eastern side of the line the time is 12 hours behind London.

This means that on the western side of the line it is one day later than on the eastern side of the line. Sometimes we change the time of the clocks so that we can make more use of the hours of daylight. If we used the same time all year around in Britain then, in the summer, the sun would rise at am and set at pm.

Not many people are awake at am, but lots of people are awake after pm. We set our clocks forward one hour in the spring so that the sun rises at am and sets at pm and we set them back one hour in the winter. This is called summer time. Find out where it is daytime and where it is nighttime right now. Colour in some pictures of nocturnal animals.

Try lots of different seasons games. Play a day and night simulation game. Spot animals in the dark in Night Light, an interactive game. Make your own paper sundial. Complete a World Day and Night Workshop online to understand more about day and night.

Need help? How to videos Why join? Day and night. What are day and night? It takes 24 hours for the Earth to turn all the way around rotation. That makes one day and one night. At any moment, half of the world is in daytime and half is in nighttime. The world is like a ball. We call the top half the Northern hemisphere and the bottom half the Southern hemisphere. The imaginary line between them is called the equator. In summer the days are longer than they are in winter.

In London, the longest day is about 16 hours and 39 minutes and the shortest is 7 hours and 45 minutes. In the Southern hemisphere the seasons are the other way around. When it is summer in Europe, it is winter in Australia. Imagine celebrating Christmas on a long, hot summer day!

To help us understand where we are in the world, we also split the world into right and left halves called the Eastern hemisphere and the Western hemisphere.