Question

During a vernal and autumnal equinox, Where does the sun's direct rays hit??

Answer 1

The Sun's ray hot on the Equator during either equinox.

Explanation:

"Equinox means "equal nights". But aren't nights equal all tge time because the Earth is always half in daylight and half in darkness?

Not quite.

Let's do an experiment, which requires only a couple simple household items and is perfectly safe. Take a globe of the Earth and shine a light on it at Mexico City. Now spin the globe to simulate the Earth's rotation and note carefully what happens to the lighted and dark areas. You see that most of the Northern Hemisphere is lighted and some of it, an area around the North Pole, is lit all the time. Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere is mostly dark, with long nights, and near the South Pole it is eternally dark on your globe. The "nights" are nowhere near equal across the globe.

You say that we cheated by angling the light towards the Northern Hemisphere? Well ... that is what happens in the real world. The Equator which is parallel to Earth's rotation is not in line with the orbit of Earth, so the light from the Sun is hitting the Earth at an angle just about all the time.

Fortunately for the Sothern Hemisphere in our experiment, the angle changes as the Earth orbits around the Sun, so that during each year the light alternates between hitting the Earth north of the Equator and hitting Earth south of the Equator. The equinoxes are when the light is hitting right on the Equator so that the nights (and the daylight) really are equal. When the light is shifting into your hemisphere, spring is coming (vernal equinox); when the light is sliding the other way fall is in the air (autumnal equinox).