Tag Archives: equator

La Visita de Nuestros Amigos, Carlos and Sarah

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A few weeks ago, Carlos and Sarah visited us and spent time exploring Ecuador. Carlos arrived a few days before Sarah and hit the ground running. Roman and Carlos first traveled to Cotopaxi National Park where they enjoyed the beautiful views of the volcano and did some horseback riding. On Friday, they rode the teleferico in Quito and hiked to the top of the Pichincha volcano (over 15,000 feet) with Lucy.

After Sarah arrived, we all traveled to Otavalo for a night and went to the textile market. When we returned to Quito on Monday evening, we got to see a soccer match between rival teams Barcelona (Guayaquil) and Deportivo Quito at the stadium right by our apartment.

After a day spent touring around Old Town, Roman, Sarah, and Carlos headed off to Mindo for a few nights. They saw a lot of interesting bird species, went zip-lining through the rainforest canopy, and hiked to a few waterfalls. The trip went by so fast and we miss them already! There are so many more things that we saw and did while they were here but I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

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Today, Quito will become the closest city on planet Earth to the Sun; it is the Equinox.

This weekend, we visited Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world.  Commonly referred to as the Equator.  Near Quito, there are two prominent celebrations of this.  The first, established some time ago, is presented with great pomp and circumstance, complete with flowered gardens, stone walkways, and a four story tower with an observatory.  The second is 250 meters away from the more well known line, was discovered eighteen years ago with GPS, and is the exact middle of the earth.  This true Equatorial line is complete with experiments to illustrate the effects and significance of this very real line.  Balancing acts, two sided sun dials, and tubs of draining water that illustrate the opposing Coriolis effects on the different sides of the equator.

My favorite picture below shows my hand over a sun dial.  We were so close to the Equinox that the sun dial cast nearly no shadow.  Today at noon CST the sun dial will cast no measurable shadow and the earth will be in balance.

The Coriolis Effect causes counter clockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere (Tornado) and clockwise rotation in the Southern Hemisphere (Typhoon).  However, at the equator, this rotation does not exist.  To illustrate, see the video below to watch water in a basin drain straight down with no vortex.  The leaves fall straight through.  Amazing.