Talk:Axial parallelism

A fact from Axial parallelism appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 December 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the axial parallelism (diagram pictured) of the Earth's tilted axis is the reason we have winter, spring, summer and fall?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Axial parallelism.

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 07:37, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Axial parallelism year-round

... that the axial parallelism of the Earth's tilted axis is the reason we have winter, spring, summer and fall? Source: Lerner, K. Lee; Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth (2003). World of earth science. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson-Gale. p. 487. ISBN 0-7876-9332-4. OCLC 60695883. Although these distances seem counterintuitive to residents of the Northern Hemisphere who experience summer in July and winter in January—the seasons are not nearly as greatly affected by distance as they are by changes in solar illumination caused by the fact that Earth's polar axis is inclined 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular to the ecliptic (the plane of the solar system through or near which most of the planet's orbits travel) and because the Earth exhibits parallelism (currently toward Polaris, the North Star) as it revolves about the Sun.
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Apion (family)

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Self-nominated at 10:14, 3 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Everything is clear and good to go for the hook. JeBonSer ^{(talk | sign)} 12:12, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Held for December 21 per WT:DYK. 06:45, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
The article talks about this being "one of the primary reasons", not "the reason", so how about:

ALT1 .. that the axial parallelism of the Earth's tilted axis is one of the reasons we have seasons?

ALT2 .. that axial parallelism and the Earth's tilted axis are the primary reasons we have seasons?

although, to be honest, I'd be happier if an astronomy expert looked at this. And I'm also not happy about the (inadvertent) sing-song effect of "reasons we have seasons", but I can't think of a better way to phrase it. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:42, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi RoySmith, the second point was the reason I went for “winter, spring, summer and fall” rather than “seasons”, and also because it is more hooky.

The article says that the change in distance from the sun is a very minor effect, and the main reason is that Earth has a tilt and that that it has parallelism. I wrote the hook to combine the two main points into one: "…the axial parallelism of the Earth's tilted axis…".

For simplicity could we just keep ALT0 and add the word “main” or “primary”?

Onceinawhile (talk) 22:20, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still thinking on this, but how about:

ALT3 .. that axial parallelism and the Earth's tilted axis are the primary causes of Earth's seasons?

ALT3a .. that axial parallelism and the Earth's tilted axis are the primary causes of seasons on the Earth?

-- RoySmith (talk) 23:36, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Roy, I still prefer “winter, spring, summer and fall” to “Earth’s seasons”; it is less dry and doesn’t duplicate the word Earth. And I still prefer the combined singular reason vs the separate two reasons; in practice these two reasons are not separate, it is the combination which creates the effect. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:24, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not enthusiastic about the wording, but in retrospect I don't think any of my suggestions are significantly better, so let's just go with the original. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:11, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]