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?
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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.
... 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. ISBN0-7876-9332-4. OCLC60695883. 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.
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”?
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]