Our Big Round World (1953)

It's a fine spring morning in a little town near New York. The children are on their way to school. There's time for them to play before school. While they're playing, how would you like to take a fast trip around the world? Let's pretend that our plane can go a million miles an hour. Here we go. On this globe, we can trace our flight. Our special plane will take us quickly across the ocean to the land of Spain. Let's land in Spain and look around. Why, look. There are children going home from school. It must be a different time of day in Spain. Let's hurry on and see if there are different times all around the world. Look, it's getting dark. We'll land for a minute in Persia or Iran. It's early evening here. The shepherds have gathered in their flock. As we fly on across Asia, it is night. We'll stop again at Tokyo, Japan. It's the middle of the night here. There are only a few cars and trucks about. Now to hurry on across the great wide Pacific back to America. We'll pause in California to watch the sunrise. It's going to be a beautiful morning, isn't it? But we started. School hasn't even begun yet. When we took our trip, we found that on one side of the world, it was bright daylight. And on the other side, it was dark night. Let's see if we can understand this. All our daylight on Earth comes from the sun. Light from the sun falls on the side of the Earth that is turned toward the sun. Here on this side of the Earth, it is daytime. On the other side, it is dark. So, we say that it is night. But we must remember that the Earth turns. When we look at the Earth from a position above the North Pole, we can see that people everywhere on the Earth spend part of the time in daylight. And as their part of the Earth turns away from the sun, they spend part of the time in the darkness of night. This is why we can stay in any one place on Earth and see both day and night. As the Earth turns us first toward the sun, then away from it. Day and night. The Earth turns toward the east. If you face toward the rising sun, you are facing east. And west is behind you. The big round world keeps turning. The great bodies of land called continents turn toward the sun one after another. And the still greater bodies of water called oceans have their day and night. It takes 24 hours for the Earth to turn once. But we'll have our globe slow down until we can't see it moving, so we can take a different kind of trip. We'll start near the North Pole on a spring day. Here the climate is cold and snowy even though the sun is shining. Now we'll fly south so quickly it will stay the same time of day. In New York we find that the weather is pleasant. The air is cool but the sun is warm. From New York we hurry farther south. In Cuba it is very warm and the workers are harvesting sugarcane. Still farther south along the Amazon River in Brazil we find a hot steaming jungle. It seems the farther south we go, the warmer it gets. What will happen if we go farther? Our next stop is in southern Brazil. Why, it is not so hot here. It's warm and sunny, but there's a pleasant breeze. Now we'll go on south to see what happens to the climate next. When we stop near the South Pole we look out on freezing cold and snow. If we made a trip around the other side of the world, we'd find again that it gets warmer and warmer as we come near the middle of the earth, and then cooler and cooler as we go on toward the poles. Do you know why? It's because the sun does not warm the earth evenly. It's warmest around the middle of the earth, where the sun seems to be straight overhead. So, an object placed near the middle of our globe casts almost no shadow. But, as we look toward one of the poles of the earth, we can see that the sun's rays come in at more and more of a slant. These slanting rays don't warm the earth as much. That is why it is colder near the poles. On globes of the earth, we draw a line all the way around, halfway between the poles. This line is called the equator. Along the equator are lands with very hot climates. In South America, in Africa, in the East Indies. Let's draw two more lines on our globe. These lines are the same distance north and south of the equator. They are called the North Tropic and the South Tropic. Near these lines, we find tropical, warm climates. Where there is enough rainfall, as in Cuba, we find great plantations where tropical crops are grown. Where there is little rain, as in North Africa, few plants can grow, and we find hot, barren deserts. There are two more important lines to notice. These lines are near the poles. They are called the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle. Near these lines, we find cold climates, where there is snow all year round. Most of us live in what are called the middle latitude regions of the Earth. In these regions, we have four seasons. We have pleasant, mild springs that melt the snow and allow plants to grow. We have warm summers, long enough for many crops to grow. Summer changes to autumn with its cooler weather. And then winter begins with its brisk cold. Do you know why we have these seasons in the middle latitudes? Could you use a globe to find out? You'll often find other lines around the globe from east to west that help us find regions of various climates. You'll also find lines from north to south that help us tell the time of day or night as we go around the world. Would you like to take a trip around the world? Why not take a make-believe trip now? See how much you can learn from the globe about the real world we live on.