Sun Movement

Two things:

There is an initial effect because the light passes through the lens of more air when it first appears over the horizon.

You are on the surface of the Earth, the Sun "revolves" around the center, not around you.

One possible explanation is that when the sun rises in the mornings, you can get a better "feel" for how quickly it rises because you tend to reference its angle against the horizon.

But once it reaches a certain point overhead, you no longer use the horizon as a reference. Instead the sun is just moving "somewhere above" you across the whole arc of the sky. The speed doesn't change - you just loose some of your ability to judge its motion.

Also it doesn't help when you're hungry and waiting for it to be lunch time.

there is another effect when it rises..........it appears larger but it isn't because you can reference it with landmarks, moon has the same effects

I'm guessing that your theory is based on watching the movement of shadows vs. sunlit areas. In the morning the shadows are longer and seem to dissipate more quickly. In the middle of the day, say from 10 am to 2pm the sun is over head, shadows are smaller and movement is almost imperceptible. Again, toward sunset, the shadows vs. sunlight seem to speed up again with shadows growing longer, faster. Having the horizon as a point of reference also comes into play. It's amazing how quickly a beautiful sunset disappears, you can visually detect the movement of the earth as the sun dips beyond the horizon.

Good catch!

It is good catch, but do not think that it is good answer.

Gee whiz, that makes sense. GA from me.

I agree, but the original poster probably meant that the rate per unit time from 6AM to 10AM appears different than the rate per unit time does between the hours of 10AM to 12PM.

In other words, you can spend 4 hours driving at 50 mph and 2 hours driving at 70 mph.

Still, I have to applaud USBport's response for calling the original poster to the mat. ;-)

I think you're right, actually. I had to sign off from my earlier post. I was going to add that from 6 to 10 AM the lengths of shadows changes rapidly compared to the change in the lengths of shadows closer to noon. This may give the sense that the Sun moves faster in the morning than around noon.

Though to me, when I worked an 8 AM to 5 PM job the time always seemed to go slowest after 4 PM.

Mostly all of you mention regarding the shadow. But i feel that SUN moves nearly thrice as much from 6 to 10 as from 10 to 12. hi USBPORT, i forget to mention this word NEARLY THRICE. Thank you for remembering...

What sensations or cues are you using to make this observation?

I ask so I can better understand what perceptions are driving this.

To the original poster. What do you suppose would be causing the rotational acceleration and deceleration of the planet?

Marijuana?

I can't catch you.............

This could only be the work of Superman who uses General Relativity in his attempt to please Lois Lane.

Luther M

Try doing some measurements: get three sticks, position them so that the top of each casts its shadow at the same point (which should also be the "bottom" of the stick) at the three times; measure the angles between them.

Do you think that if you moved say 6,000 miles or 10,000 km East or West, then you would observe something different.

On a larger scale: Why does the 1st 20 or so years of your life seems go so much slower than the 2nd 20 or so years? The older I get (late 40s) the faster time seem to travel. so fast, I'm getting a little motion sickness

Jim C

One reason is when you are 4 years old one year is 1/4 of your life!

Now 1 year is about 2% of your life.

RE: why the first 20 years of life go slower than the next 20 etc - it's about relative perception, like the sun near the horizon seeming bigger.

If you are 10, 1 year is 1/10th of your life, but when you get to 20, it is only 1/20th of your life so seems to pass twice as fast!

That's my theory, anyway.

Post #1 hints the reason:

The reason is:

when near horizon, the Sun rays pass through the air layer in oblique angle. Thus the refraction effect is there. Can you believe that when we see the Sun first on horizon, it is still below horizon. We see it because of refraction. The time of sunset is defined in astronomy as the moment the trailing edge of the sun's disk disappears below the horizon in the west. Due to refraction of light in the atmosphere, the ray path of the setting sun is highly distorted near the horizon making the apparent astronomical sunset occur when the sun's disk is already about one diameter below the horizon.(Refer Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset)

As the Sun comes up and up this effect goes on reducing. Thus, near zenith, the rotational movement of Sun we see is almost matches with the rotational speed of the earth around its own axis. But thats is not true when we see Sun near horizon. The angular movement of the Sun we see is more than the rotational speed of the earth.

Thus, the angle the Sun seems to move between say 6 am to 8 am is much more than the the Sun seems to move between 11 am to 1 pm. (Let me make the time correction to avoid the catch. But, this difference is not really big enough to be sensed by our eyes. The reason of our feeling is nearness of the horizon as explained by others.