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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!!

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To: Suma who wrote (100829)4/9/2005 4:00:27 PM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (1) of 108807
 
Great article. Thanks.

The engineer and amateur astronomer's perspective on this is that the seasons rise and fall like sine waves describing a "heat engine". The temperature resulting from the heating and cooling effects of sunlight are like cosine waves.

You will find that when sine is at 1 and -1 (the maximum/minimum light of equinoxes), cosine is only halfway up ("45 degrees out of phase" as engineers say). Mid-summer is mathematically when cosine gets to be 1 (or -1 for mid-winter). Greeks, you know, were numerologists and thought geometry to be the revelations of the gods!

These are days of maximum/minimum warmth. Approximating 52 weeks in 4 seasons, we get 13 weeks for each season. Therefore, 6 1/2 weeks after peak darkness (typically December 22, the 3rd week of December), we get mid winter (the first week in February). The maximum day of heat, on average would be 6 1/2 weeks after maximum daylight. This means that first week of August would be "mid-Summer".

Thanks again and welcome to the community of Groundhog Day sun worshipers. We seem to have made a conversion! It is funny and meaningful that "Phil" (the man in Groundhog Day) was a weatherman.
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