Winter Solstice Experiment

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Dec 20 2008

Winter Solstice Experiment

Posted at 10:22 pm under Science Education

Last summer, my daughter & I measured shadows cast by our basketball goal on the first day of summer. Today is one day before the first day of winter, we are doing the same experiment to make a comparison. The sun is shining but it was only 14º outside! Needless to say, we were not terribly excited to try to make a video or collect 3 hours worth of data. Instead, we collected five data points and found where the shadow was at its shortest length.

11:40 AM	230
11:50 AM	225
12:00 PM	222
12:10 PM	220
12:20 PM	221

Last summer, the sun at mid-day was at an elevation angle of 73.25º. Today, the sun’s elevation angle was only 27.19º. I wish we would have recorded the temperature that day last June. I recall it was quite warm, probably in the 80’s or low 90’sF. Today, the temperature was in the teens, so there is about as big of a contrast as you can get.

We haven’t had a chance to discuss what we found yet, but it will be interesting to see what a first grader thinks is causing the different shadow lengths. Stay tuned.

6 responses so far

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6 Responses to “Winter Solstice Experiment”

Paul Bogushon 20 Dec 2008 at 11:49 pm 1

Very cool experiment.

You asked a great question on one of my posts last week.
“Do you have any concerns about placing students on a global stage, putting their unrefined, undeveloped ideas out there vulnerable to criticism?”
One I think I want to flesh out in a future post. I did mess around with answering it in a post last May–a bit silly, but I figured what the heck, let me post it:
http://blogush.edublogs.org/2008/05/10/what-do-you-see/
Bill Genereuxon 21 Dec 2008 at 12:00 am 2

Cool is an understatement. We were freezing trying to get this done today! Didn’t know if it would be cloudy tomorrow or not. You have to make hay (and science) when the sun shines.

Thanks for your post from last May. I don’t think I saw it back then.
Kenon 21 Dec 2008 at 4:30 pm 3

Not only is that very cool, that is the way I wish more teachers would teach concepts and such
sciencegirlemon 26 Jun 2009 at 2:51 pm 4

I rmiber that that wus fun!
Paul Bogushon 26 Jun 2009 at 2:57 pm 5

She commented on your post from 6 months ago….put a huge smile on big daddy O’
Bill Genereuxon 26 Jun 2009 at 8:59 pm 6

Yep, she’s just figuring out the commenting feature. I think she re-reads our blog posts quite often.