Ain't No Sunshine Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rjukan (Norway)

Situated 170km from Oslo, Rjukan does not receive a single ray of sunlight for six months of the year. From September to March the mountains make it impossible for rays of sunshine to reach the valley floor.

To alleviate this, in 2013 three heliostat mirrors were installed to capture the sunlight and reflect it downwards to the main square.

Meanwhile, according to the World Meteorological Organization, Yuma (Arizona) is the sunniest place on earth.

Its total of 11 hours of sunlight in winter and up to 13 in summer means Yuma experiences an average of 4,015 hours of sunshine per year.

Answer: Midnight

Okay, so that old folk song is wrong when it says "Though it's darkest before the dawn..."

Midnight is the point halfway between dusk and dawn when the sun is at 180 degrees to the observer's position.

There are, though, factors that may affect brightness, such as the phase of the moon.

The phrase "darkest before the dawn" comes from the theologian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) who said: 'It is always darkest just before the day dawneth".

This phrase is often wrongly attributed to the Bible.

Answer: Babylonian

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between our sun - Sol - and earth. Its shadow casts darkness on a large part of the earth.

The earliest known Babylonian record is of the eclipse that took place on May 3, 1375 BCE.

The details were recorded on clay tablets found at Ugarit in what is now Syria.

Incidentally, the solar eclipse expected on July 16, 2186 will be the longest for thousands of years. You may wish to put that in your diaries now.

Answer: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that has a seasonal pattern.

It is sometimes known as "winter depression" because the symptoms are more apparent and more severe during the winter.

Symptoms can include a persistent low mood; the loss of pleasure or interest in everyday activities; feelings of despair; a lack of energy; sleepiness during the day; sleeping for longer than normal at night; and finding it hard to get up in the morning.

Answer: Amazonian rain forest

Very little natural light penetrates to the floor of the Amazonian rain forest as up to 95 per cent of natural daylight is screened out by higher levels of trees.

As a result, there is relatively little vegetation on the rainforest floor.

Answer: Tambora, Indonesia

More than 60,000 people died as a result of the eruption. The volcano ejected sulphurous gas that generated sulphate particles in the atmosphere and blocked out the sun's life-giving rays.

The eruption created a year without a summer that led to food shortages and hardship throughout Europe and eastern North America.

Nothing can grow on earth without sunlight, even if some plants can exist with very low levels.

Answer: Eight minutes and 20 seconds

Earth orbits the Sun at a distance of about 150 million km. Light, meanwhile, travels at 300,000 kilometres/second.

So, it takes sunlight 500 seconds, or 8 minutes and 20 seconds, to travel from the sun to earth.

These timings are an average. They vary, according to the earth's elliptical orbit, from 490 seconds to 507 seconds.

Best keep your winter woolies handy just in case you are around when it happens sometime about five billion years from now.

Answer: False

It is true that cats and dogs can see better in low light than humans, but they cannot see in the pitch dark: they need some light.

Meanwhile, the Tarsier, a tiny primate in Southeast Asia, has incredibly good night vision. The animals are only about four inches long, but their eyes are about half an inch wide, meaning they have have the biggest eye-to-body-size ratio known in the animal kingdom. They are nocturnal predators that hunt for insects and small lizards or birds when there is little or no light available.

Nocturnal creatures, such as cats and owls have eyes that pick up very low light levels to enable them to "see in the dark".

Answer: Eating carrots

Britain was the first nation to use radar effectively. However, the government did not want to give any secrets away so spun the story that eating carrots gave RAF pilots an ability to see in the pitch black.

Ironically, the German Army was using infra-red night vision devices on their tanks from 1939.

In the USA, the M1 and M3 infrared night sighting devices, also known as the "sniperscope" or "snooperscope", were introduced in World War II.

Oh and if you want to improve your own low light vision, blueberries have been shown to be a helpful food.

Answer: The South Pole

If you travel to the South Pole you will find the sun is always above the horizon in summer, and below it in winter.

The sun rises and sets only twice every 12 months at the South Pole - if you can find it, that is, because it is constantly on the move.

A similar set of circumstances exists at the North Pole.