From: bressne_at_clearviewregional.edu
Date: Mon Sep 22 2008 - 11:42:25 PDT
Experiment Report for the Eratosthenes Project on http://youth.net/ School Name: Clearview Regional Middle School School Location: Mullica Hill, NJ Email Address: bressne_at_clearviewregional.edu Experimenter: Neil Bress (on behalf of Period 8) Latitude 39.45 N Longitude: 75.12 W Distance to Equator: 2745 miles Measured shadow angle in degrees: 39.6 Calculated Earth circumference: 24,954.5 miles Comments: Our 8 period class (7th Grade Pre-Algebra) conducted the experiment at virtually the exact time of equinox. Sunrise here in Mullica Hill was 6:48AM with sunset at 6:57PM. We calculated 12 hours and 9 minutes of sunlight and made our measurements at 12:52PM. We used a meter stick as the vertical axis, and measured the length of the shadow as 83cm. Mrs. Kelly, the Honors Algebra II teacher, helped the students with a couple of trigonometry formulas, and we calculated the angle at 39.6 degrees. We determined our distance from the equator by using 69 miles per degree and 1.15 miles per minute, and using the proportion from the project website, calculated a circumference of 24, 954.5 miles. We are going to repeat our experiments on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Neil Bress Mathematics Teacher Clearview Middle School (on behalf of Period 8)