From: arieliso_at_yahoo.com
Date: Tue Sep 23 2008 - 19:57:38 PDT
Experiment Report for the Eratosthenes Project on http://youth.net/ School Name: HOME SCHOOL GROUP ASSOC WITH SUNFIELD SCHOOL School Location: PORT TOWNSEND, WA Email Address: arieliso_at_yahoo.com Experimenter: ISOLDE PERRY, HEATHER HAMILTON, CARLY DAVIES Latitude 47. N Longitude: 122. W Distance to Equator: 3281 miles Measured shadow angle in degrees: 48 Calculated Earth circumference: 24,607.5 Comments: It was just a lot of fun to get everything together and make it work. And also confusing since I did not know whether to use daylight noon or the "real noon". It turned out that daylight noon was more accurate but I can't figure out why. And thank God one the students was smarter than I am because I hadn't quite "got" that we needed to put the string to the end of the shadow. (I am NOT a scientist! nor have I ever taught or taken an astronomy class till now.) That said, maybe the instructions could be a little more detailed for others like me. You didn't ask the date we did it but it was September 23, 2008. Thanks so much for doing this. The students got real excited too! PS We read that new children's book about Eratosthenes.(The Librarian.....) It helped understand it more but I am still not sure how it worked!! Could we have just taken our latitude and put it in position "a" in the formula? All the best, Isolde Perry Waldorf Teacher