Understanding student weaknesses
If you had to explain what causes the change in seasons, could you? Surprisingly, studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of people — including most college graduates — hold the incorrect belief that the seasons are the result of the Earth moving closer to or further from the sun. The real answer, scientists say, is that as Earth’s axis is tilted with respect to its orbit, when on its journey it is angled inward, the sun rises higher in the sky, and that results in more direct sunlight, longer days, and warmer temperatures. Distance plays no role; we are actually closest to the sun in the dead of winter, during the first week of January. Why do so many people continue to hold the wrong idea? The answer, said Philip Sadler, the Frances W. Wright Senior Lecturer in the Department of Astronomy and director of the science education department...