Sean 0'Connell, Age 8, of Phoenix, Ariz.., for his question;
Why do we have the North and South Poles?
The North Pole is at the top of the world and high above it hangs the golden star, Polaris. When you face Polaris, you are facing north. For ages, travelers have used this star to guide them. The poles are very useful. To us, for they give us the north and south directions. But the earth has other reasons for its North pole and its South Pole.
Our beautiful planet is a big ball, about 25,000 miles around the waist. It is a very frisky globe. Once a year it travels 600 million miles in an orbit around the sun. It also spins like a top. It spins or rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. The axis is a straight line fry pole to pole through the center of the globe. The two poles are the two ends of the earth's axis.
Our globe spins alone in the sky, surrounded on all sides by oceans of space. As it rotates, it spins us around to face one view and then another of the heavens. This is why the sun and the moon and the stars seem to move over the sky. But the star Polaris does not move. It hangs directly over the North Pole, and the two poles do not spin around to face different views of the sky.
At the South pole exactly, the ground does not rotate. A few steps away, it rotates a small circle in 24 hours. As you move farther and farther from the pole, the ground spins a bigger and bigger circle every 24 hours. The equator is half way between the two poles, and there the ground. Spins around 25,000 miles every 24 hours.
The poles have a long winter night and a long summer day, because the axis of the earth is tilted. You would expect it to waltz around its orbit in an upright position. But the axis is tilted toward the path of its orbit. As the earth circles its orbit, first one pole and then the other is tipped toward the sun. In July, the North Pole bows to the sung and the Arctic enjoys a summer day which lasts for months. Six months later, the South Pole bows to the sun, and the Arctic goes through months of winter night.
The two poles are built in markers, and we use them to get the north and south directions. The equator is a man made marker, half way between the two poles. We use these points to figure the lines of latitude and longitude. These man made lines mark every spot on the earth and shave us distances as well as directions.