For the members of the club “Nature Wonders” from Liceul Tehnologic “Mihai Eminescu” Dumbrăveni (Romania), the summer holiday was an opportunity to admire, explore and understand nature. Back to school, they prepared a Photovoice exhibition using beautiful photos that they had taken during their trips and hikes. If you wish to see nature through their eyes, we invite you to access the following link https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dmx1iZZ2lQoeO-INILXSMiKIL-QvOydb or see their presentation in video format below.
In September 2019, the pupils from the club “Nature wonders” from Istituto Comprensivo “Giovanni Pierluigi” Palestrina (Italy) worked on the topic “Fall equinox” and created an informative material about equinoxes. You can read it by accessing the following link https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xqg6zTD1TnsoAMXLRz3JlwQRDYK5ve6N or below:
Equinox
by Alessandro Filippi, III E
Equinox is the time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator and day and night have approximately the same duration. There are two equinoxes: the first one is on the 21th of March and is called “summer equinox”, while the other is on the 22th of September and is the autumnal equinox.
Although the equinox should be characterized by 12 hours of night and day, this phenomenon rarely happens due to the interference of the atmosphere refraction. Atmosphere refraction is caused by the density of air that is capable to decrease the velocity of the light rays.
In the polar regions, equinoxes sign the slow change from “midnight sun” to “polar night”. “Midnight sun” represents the phenomenon in which the sun never drops below the horizon, so that there is sunlight 24 hours a day. During the “polar night”, indeed, the sun never rises, keeping the region dark for 24-hour periods.
In the pagan era, the autumnal equinox was a crucial moment. It was a time in which the pagans gave thanks to summer and paid respect to the approaching darkness. This moment was called Mabon and one of its typical rituals was represented by building an altar with fruits and vegetables.