Great question. Did you know that for a long time people didn't think that the earth was turing but believed that all the stars and the moon and the sun rotated around the earth. Now we know for sure that the earth turns and Richard Ferch answered your question for you.

Do you know how the Earth was made? Billions of years ago, it was made from a lot of dust particles that collected together when the cloud of gas and dust they were part of slowly collapsed to form our Sun. The cloud started out spinning around very slowly. As each part got smaller, it had to turn around faster to keep the same total amount of spin.

You can see this when a figure skater pulls in her arms. She suddenly starts turning faster without working any harder. The skater's spin slows down quickly, because her skates rub on the ice. But there is nothing to slow down the turning of the Sun and the planets, including our Earth. So they just keep on turning and turning. It's a good thing, too, or we wouldn't have night and day. The earth would get too hot on the side facing the sun, and too cold on the side away from the sun.

Actually, the planet Uranus rotates like the earth but it's tilted so that it's north and south poles sometimes point directly to the sun. For part of it's year there is no day and night. Half of the planet gets warm while the other half freezes. Uranus is so far from the sun that it doesn't really matter, it's always really cold.

Thanks for your questions.

Answer #% % filename A043.DOC page% % page 1 of% % numpages 1 % % date \@ "MMMM d, yyyy"January 25, 1997

€Ashley Laplante, room 12, Mrs. Mastine
David Newell, Edward, Bobby, room 11, Mrs. Pottery