now so if it's not if if the difference between the seasons is not the distance then what is the reason that the summer is hot well let's do this okay there's two basic reasons and one of them is what you have you actually already posted up in the chat a little bit further check this out if you are living right here this right here I mean you know wait let me draw up this has got too much stuff on it let me draw a another version of that that's simpler let's say we got the Sun right here and the earth is right here so that this is the equator this is the North Pole and this is the South Pole so real quick if this is the shadow behind the earth would this be winter or summer for this person living in Florida would that be winter or summer right there for this person living in Florida winter or summer I think we have a little bit of a delay here we go it's that winter is summer for the northern hemisphere it is winter that is correct it is winter because this person is on the part of the planet that's tilted away from the Sun they're gonna have winter okay and as the Earth rotates as they rotate they're gonna that's their day right they spin around the earth like that and you can see right here in the winter they spend more of their rotation in the darkness they're only in the day for this little part of the rotation right so that means they're not gonna get daylight for very long on the other hand somebody living down here in Australia on that same day is going to be having summer right and so when they spin around the planet they're gonna spin around like this and you can see here they spend more of their rotation in the daytime side of the planet so the first reason that the summer is hot and the winter is cold is the length of daylight the length of daylight okay so in the summer you're going to have a lot of daylight and in the winter you're going to have only a little bit of daylight so basically in the summer because you are tilted into the sunlight the Sun has a longer period of time to heat the ground up and therefore make you feel hotter okay so the length of the daylight is the first reason that the tilt matters okay there's another reason though that is way way more important okay that last reason that the summer is hot and the winter is cold is the angle of the sunlight the angle of the sunlight now check this out let's say we're going to draw two pictures here's the ground during the summer and here's the ground during the winter now in the summer if we look back at this page this person right here don't overthink this where would this person have to look in the sky to see the Sun which way would they point their head to see the Sun if they're standing right here in the summertime part of the planet which direction would they look straight up right this person would look straight up to see the Sun so that means in the summer if you're standing right here the sun's gonna be pretty close to being straight over your head I'll put Sun right there the Sun is pretty close to being straight over your head okay now that's somebody in the summer over here this person so somebody's asking is this the reason specifically for such summer or this is for summer versus winter okay this is for summer versus winter because again this person is standing in the summer part of the planet and as we said they would look straight up this person is in the winter part of the planet if they look straight up they're looking over here that's not looking at the Sun where would this person in the winter part of the planet have to look to see the Sun where would they have to look they're not gonna look straight up where they gonna look yeah off to their side off to the in this picture off to though to the left right they'd have to look kind of over this way right so in the winter that means like let me put the person standing kind of way over here the Sun is not going to be as high in the sky it's gonna be off to your side even at noon it never goes it's never it's not gonna get very high in the sky right so this is gonna change the angle of the sunlight okay in the summer that sunlight is coming basically straight down at you whereas in the winter all the beams of sunlight have to come in from an angle like that okay now why is this important for two reasons okay the reason that the angle is the most important thing that makes the summer hunt and the winter cold is because of two reasons check this out look at this one beam of light this one beam of light is the exact same beam of light in the summer and in the winter it's just kept coming in at a different angle but that beam of light carries only a certain amount of heat in it it's the same amount of heat here and here but there's only a certain amount of heat to it okay and let's see what happens when that light hits the ground okay in the summer that beam of light is coming almost perfectly straight down so all of that heat goes into this ground right here okay all of that heat hits that amount of ground whereas the same beam of light because it's coming in like this in the winter is gonna do this here we go oh I'm gonna have to extend my picture so because it's coming in in an angle it doesn't all hit the ground at the same time and what happened to the amount of ground that that beam of light is trying to heat up what happened to the amount of ground that the light is trying to heat up in the winter is it trying to heat up the same amount of ground uh less ground or more ground it's bigger yeah it's more ground now check it out that beam only had a certain amount of heat in it so if you spread it out and make it heat up more ground like this then that means you're spreading your heat thinner okay and yeah this is actually one of the reasons that plants have a harder time living in the winter because if the light is more spread out in the winter then that means each individual leaf on a plant would get less of that light because it's being spread out right so basically one of the main reasons that the angle is important is that in the summer the light is very concentrated because it's coming straight down and in the winter it's very spread out and and that heat is spread thin so that's one reason that the angle of the sunlight is important okay now on the other hand check this out that's not the only reason this angle is important here's my next question have you guys ever been to a lake before you probably have been to a lake right and imagine you took a bunch of rocks to that lake okay you took a bunch of rocks to that lake and let me just draw a quick picture imagine you went to the lake so here's like the edge of the lake and you stood on the edge of that Lake and you threw your rocks straight down you just here's your hand ignore this guy's monster arm sorry he's releasing some rocks straight down okay here's a rock he's throwing it straight down what's probably gonna happen to that rock when it hits the water if you go out and throw a rock straight down at the water what's probably going to happen to that rock don't overthink this yeah it's gonna sink it's gonna go in the water you could say it gets absorbed by the lake that rocks gonna go just into the water and keep going down okay it gets absorbed by the lake okay now on the other hand let's say you went up to the same exact Lake and this time you threw your rocks so that they were going at a really shallow angle like this does anybody know what will happen when the rock hits the water like that if you throw it at a very shallow angle instead of straight down what might happen when the rock hits the water well it could make a splash either way but have you ever gone to a lake and kind of just like flung the flung the rocks kind of like this real shallow angle it'll skip right if you threw it just right at a shallow enough angle you might end up getting it to bounce off the water or skip right now here's the thing what is light it's actually a really hard question but one way to think of light and we'll talk more about this later is actually as a stream of particles so light any beam of light if you could somehow get in microscopic enough is actually a stream of little light particles is anybody know what a particle of light is called people don't always know this when it starts with a pH as they might know where little particle of light is called it starts with a pH a note-takers that's okay I was just trying to see if anybody happen to know it it's called photons photons so oh there's somebody got it there you go so light one way to think of it is just as a stream little particles called photons okay so that means that every beam of light like a flashlight beam or a Sun beam is actually kind of like a bunch of little pellets hitting you a bunch of tiny little pellets shooting out of that whatever is shooting the light so the Sun is just shooting tons and tons and tons millions of little pellets in every beam of light right little light pellets right now um the lights above you are probably hitting you with billions of little light pellets a second just puff up can any of you guys feel these little light pellets on you can you feel the little light pellets anybody feel them feel like you're getting shot with a little toy machine gun or something no you can't right you can't feel that because they're way too small right they're way too small so it's not gonna hurt you or anything but let's see where I'm going with this check it out in the summer the Sun is shooting those little pellets straight down so when they get to the ground just like this rock when you throw the rock straight down it goes into the lake so when these little pellets of light come straight down where are they gonna go when they hit the ground where these little like pellets gonna go when they hit the ground if they're going straight down trying to use this as a metaphor where these little light pellets gonna end up inside the ground yes inside the ground just like the rock that you threw straight down into the lake it went into the lake when the Sun shoots these photons straight down they're gonna end up going into the ground and what that does is it heats the ground up right the only way for us to actually get heat from the Sun is for it to get absorbed by the ground and that's what makes us feel hot okay whereas let's see if we can see where I'm going with this in the winter the Sun is shooting those little pellets of light at a shallow angle what might happen to some of these pellets of light when they hit the ground what might happen in the winter to some of these little pellets of light what might they do when they hit the ground like that what might happen somebody's giving it a try I'm gonna see if they get it what might happen here again use the use the lake metaphor yeah they skip light skips some some of that light some of it will go into the ground but some of it will skip and not get absorbed yeah some of it will skip and not get absorbed so this isn't technically refraction this would be just called reflection okay basically the same is like what happens in a mirror okay so just like this rock skips when you throw it at a shallow angle light can skip when you throw it at a shallow angle so not only is the winter cold because this light is spread out it's also extra cold because it's easier for the light to bounce off the ground and take its heat back off to space in the winter because of skipping like stones it's much less likely to bounce off the ground in the summer so we keep all of that heat okay so if I asked what is the most important reason that the summer is hot and the winter is cold it's the angle of the sunlight that's the main thing