• Question: How does the Earth rotate?

    Asked by anon-193404 to Morwenna, Jamal, iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 12 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-193419.
    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      The Earth rotates around its axis (an imaginary line which goes from the North Pole to the South Pole) in a counter-clockwise direction. The angle of the axis on which the Earth rotates is tilted from the angle at which the Earth orbits the sun: imagine the Earth standing straight up as it orbits the sun – but rotating on a slight lean. This is called the “axial tilt”.
      See here for more info: http://www.planetsforkids.org/how-fast-does-the-earth-rotate.html

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Earth spins because of the way it was formed. Our Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a huge cloud of gas and dust started to collapse under its own gravity. As the cloud collapsed, it started to spin. Some of the material within this cloud gathered into swirling eddies and eventually formed into planets. As the planets formed, they kept this spinning motion. This is similar to what you see when skaters pull in their arms and spin faster. As material gathered in more closely to form a planet, like Earth, the material spun faster. The Earth keeps on spinning because there are no forces acting to stop it.

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