Human Sundials

We needed a sunny day (all day!) to do our Human Sundial experiment.  Sunny Wisconsin days in May are hard to come by!  We finally got one and headed outside every few hours to record our shadows and observe how they change throughout the day.

We started at 8:30am by marking our positions on the ground.

Next, we outlined our shadows.

Then we measured how many fists high the sun was in the sky.

Finally, we measured the length of our shadows with rulers.

We knew how many rulers (how many feet) it took to measure our shadow...

...but we were supposed to measure our shadows in inches...

...we really had to work our brains to add 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 + 12...

...such focus and concentration!

When we went out two hours later at 10:30, we were amazed by the changes!  We noticed our shadows were all "slanty!"

 We were also shorter!  (This was pretty funny.)

When we went out at 12:30 we found out that our shadows had changed again...they were now even shorter and went out to the side!

The sun was so many fists high in the sky!

So far we had some pretty cool observations.

We went out at 2:30.  Our shadows looked kind of like they did at 10:30 but they were further away.

The sun was going down in the sky.

Some of us couldn't see our shadows anymore.  Poor Bennett!

We figured out that Bennett's work area was now in the school's shadow!

It was a great day of learning about Light & Sound!