Geography 110H

First Assignment for Fall 1997

Due Sept. 11, 1997

This exercise focuses on two things: first, a basic introduction to the earth and its place in the solar system. Second, an introduction to earth/sun relations, the importance of seasonal changes in the way the sun's radiation strikes the earth's surface, and the annual cycle of day length as a function of latitude. The WWW sites listed below will provide information that helps to illuminate these concepts.

1. Look up a site providing general introductory information about the earth and its neighbors. Compare and contrast the earth with its nearest neighbor, Venus, and with its slightly more distant neighbor, Mars. Were you surprised by what you read, or was this information already familiar to you? If you're ambitious, you might consider the following question: what conditions make a planet habitable?

In order to facilitate your work on this part of the assignment I will try to divide the class into groups of three students, and within each group you can discuss what aspects to compare, then assign each individual with primary responsibility either for one of the three planets or for one major aspect of the comparison among the three planets. Each group will prepare a report which can be posted to the class bulletin board, with each student taking primary responsibility for one section. Come to class prepared to make a brief oral presentation on your major observations.

Both of the following sites are also in the bookmark list accessible from the class homepage:

"The Nine Planets" (http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/ )

or another one known as

"Views of the solar system" (http://bang.lanl.gov/solarsys/). You may,of course, consult other sources as well by doing a search of the web.

The remainder of this assignment can be done individually, but you are free to consult with other students in working on it.

2. Earth-sun relations that govern the duration of daylight and the location of the circle of illumination can be illustrated using the Earth Viewer at the following location:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/expert.html

You can see the areas in sunlight and darkeness for the particular moment at which you are visiting the site, and you can choose to look at a flat map or a global view centered over any location of your choosing. (The images load slowly, so you may not want to do this at prime time.) If you look at a flat topographic map, note the shape of the line dividing day from night. Now look at it on a global view (click on "above location" and select a latitude, longitude, and altitude above earth's surface before clicking on "View Earth"). What does this say to you about the information provided on maps and the interpretation of coordinate systems?

Try several different views from different latitudes (including polar and equatorial views) and compare what you see with the discussion in the textbook of earth-sun relations for different seasons.

3. The U.S. Naval Observatory maintains a web site called the Directorate of Time. Here is its address:

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/time.html

A subset of this web site will allow you to calculate times of sunrise and sunset for any location expressed in geographic coordinates:

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/srss2.html

or, alternatively, at the following site, if you type in the name of a U.S. town or city, you can get a whole year's worth of sunrise and sunset times:

http://riemann.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/docs/SunRiseSet.html

Visit one of these sites and find times of sunrise and sunset as well as length of daylight for the 22nd day of each month through the year, for each of several latitudes. Tabulate this information and make a plot showing how either time of sunrise and sunset or duration of daylight varies by month; superimpose plots for several different latitudes on the same page. You can also pick a single date and plot how duration of daylight varies with latitude. I will accept any combination of graphs that shows you have explored the range of variation by date and location; provide a brief discussion that relates your observations to the discussion of earth-sun relations in the textbook.