• Question: What direction does the earth spin?

    Asked by gars135fee to Naziyah, Namrah, John, Joanna, Hester, Ed, Adriana on 4 Mar 2021.
    • Photo: Adriana D'Souza

      Adriana D'Souza answered on 4 Mar 2021:

      Great question. And as with many great engineering questions the answer is “It depends”. So it depends in which direction you are looking at the earth.

      When viewed looking down on the North Pole from above, Earth spins counterclockwise.

      When viewed looking down on the South Pole from above, Earth spins clockwise.

      There is no absolute sense in which things rotate clockwise or counterclockwise. Just like there is no absolute sense in which something is pointing right or left. It depends on what direction you are facing.

    • Photo: Naziyah Mahmood

      Naziyah Mahmood answered on 4 Mar 2021: last edited 4 Mar 2021 10:24 am

      Hi! Just as Adriana said, it all really depends where ‘you’ are looking from!
      One way I like to think about it is lets think of the timezones – like how Japan is several hours ahead of us in the UK, and people in the US are several hours behind us.
      The Earth’s rotation is known as “prograde”, meaning it goes from what we know as West to East. So someone sitting in Japan (East) will see their sunset for that day (and sunrise for the next day) before we do in the UK since they are further East than us.

      If you were to be looking down from the North Pole at the Earth when this is happening, it would look like it’s counter-clockwise!

      Here’s a good little picture!
      https://geography.name/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/478-640×439.webp

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