Spring has arrived!

I have heard the term “vernal equinox” but I never knew just what it meant. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

An equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the plane of Earth's equator passes the center of the Sun. At this time the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, night and day are about equal length.

Vernal is the Latin term for spring.

Of course you can find a video of this occurrence that is pretty cool to watch.

I found lots of other interesting tidbits; this is what happens when a one-time statistician whose memory is impaired has a lot of time on her hands.

Is the Vernal Equinox Really Equal?
The idea is that on the first day of spring there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness, but it rarely works out that way. There is always a time each spring, and again each fall, when the hours of light and darkness are equal, but it usually occurs before the vernal equinox and after the autumnal equinox.

First Day of Spring--Above and Below the Equator
The vernal equinox, which occurs on March 20 or 21 each year and signals the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, is also the autumnal equinox—the first day of autumn—in the Southern Hemisphere. Conversely, the autumnal equinox in the north, which occurs in late September, is the first day of spring south of the equator.

Fun Facts About the First Day of Spring
Here are a few other interesting facts about the first day of spring:

ü  If you were standing on the equator during either the vernal or autumnal equinox, you would see the sun pass directly overhead, the only two times in the year when that is true.

ü  The two equinoxes are also the only times during the year when the sun rises due east and sets due west.

ü  In spring, the Earth’s axis is tilted toward the sun, increasing the number of daylight hours and bringing warmer weather that causes plants to bring forth new growth.

There is a persistent myth that at the vernal equinox, and only at the vernal equinox, you can stand a raw egg on its end. There is an equally persistent rebuttal that says it’s not possible at any time to balance a raw egg on its end. Neither assertion is true. With a little patience (or sometimes a lot), you can balance a raw egg on its end at any time of year. The first day of spring has nothing to do with it.

This last part brought to mind two vignettes.

The first is from Ramona Quimby: Age 8, one of a series of books by Beverly Cleary. Ramona usually brought a hard-boiled egg in her lunchbox every day. When it was time for lunch, Ramona would crack the egg on her head. But one day a mistake was made and Ramona found herself covered in raw egg. When our daughters were reading these books, our family loved this story, and we still mention it from time to time to this day when eating hard boiled eggs.

The second is an episode from Season 3 of Modern Family called “Egg Drop.” Unfortunately I cannot seem to find a video of the episode without paying for it, and even if I did that, I am not sure I would be able to share it here. The storyline involves a school assignment to devise a way to drop a raw egg out of a second story window without breaking the egg. Manny and Luke compete and then try to work together, with help from Luke’s mother, Claire, and Manny’s stepfather, Jay, whose second wife is Manny’s mother Gloria. They never succeed, so they try to extract the solution from Luke’s older “brainy” sister Alex. But Alex is not about to help them cheat on the assignment. She only reveals her clever solution after Luke and Manny have to hand in their work: she put the egg in a cup and attached a little parachute to the cup to ensure a soft landing.

Somehow I got from the vernal equinox to an episode of Modern Family in fewer than six degrees of separation!

Enjoy the daylight!

Love,

Rebecca