Day and night

In your book, Our Wondrous World (Chapter 9), you learn that the day changes into night, and the night becomes day again. But what causes day and night?

Every morning the Sun seems to rise in the east. It seems to move across the sky, and in the evening it sets in the west. So is the Sun going round the Earth? No! The Sun does not go round the Earth. It is the Earth that turns, or rotates.

Your book shows this with a torch and a globe. The torch shines on one side of the globe, like the Sun. The side where the light falls has day, and the side with no light has night. When the globe is slowly turned and the torch is kept still, different parts of the globe come to face the light. In the same way, as the Earth rotates, each place turns towards the Sun (day) and then away from it (night).

Your book also tells you about Dong, a village in Arunachal Pradesh. It is known as India's 'First Village of the Sunrise', because it is the very first place where the Sun's rays touch Indian land each morning.