Muserology Cafe

Measuring the Sun (October 2010)

by Kameryn Talley, age 14, New Mexico

It was the beginning of my eighth-grade year, and the first day was dull and slow. That's why it seemed strange when I walked into my new science classroom and saw bright colors and crazy objects all around the place. 

Someone popped her head out of a door draped with brightly colored decorations at the back of the room. The bell rang and everyone took their seats, every pair of eyes on this wacky, excited teacher. As the class went on, we got to know our classroom surroundings and Mrs. Haste--or, as I would put it, the most amazing teacher ever.

A few weeks later, she welcomed us to class by saying she was very excited for what we were about to do. After what seemed like forever, the passing bell rang and she stepped into the room. She told us that we were the only class that could do a project studying the shadow of the sun, because we had our class period at solar noon time--the time of day when the sun is at its highest point in the sky. We would be doing the project to find out how climate and seasons relate to the shadow and angle of the sun.

Mrs. Haste explained to us that we would be using a tool called an astrolabe that measures the angle of the sun. We would also take two meter sticks outside and position them at a 90-degree angle, with one flat on the ground and the other pointing straight up at the sky. This let us measure the shadow of the sun. The experiment would last from about October to March, and my class would go outside once every week to take our measurements. We had a chart that told us the exact solar noon time each day, which is when we needed to collect our data.

We contacted many people at the South Pole because they were conducting the same project we were. We mostly talked to one man named Al Baker who was very kind and sent us pictures and letters in reply to our questions. We asked him anything we wanted to know about the South Pole, and he replied as soon as he could. We even sent him a box of "goodies" for Thanksgiving with drawings of turkeys and school shirts.

The results showed that the sun's shadow was shorter in the fall and slowly started increasing until it reached its peak in December. Then the length of the shadow started decreasing again as the weather got warmer. This is because the sun is more directly overhead in the warmer months. In colder months, we are tilted away from the sun, so its rays hit us at more of a slant and the shadow is longer. Since the South Pole is on the other side of the world, their results were the opposite of ours. The shadow was longer to start with, then decreased until it reached its low point and rose again.

Our project was so successful that three of my friends and I got to present our data in front of the school board, where we were congratulated for our hard work. All of our letters to Al, data, and other information have also been put online. We recently found out that our results are being presented at the International Polar Year Oslo Scientific Meeting in Norway, which is a very big and important meeting for scientists. We have sent a letter asking for recognition to Governor Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, as well as the U.S. Ambassador to Norway. So far, the governor has sent us a letter back. The project is going to be in our school newspaper.

This project has been very important to Mrs. Haste, my classmates, and me. I never thought that wacky teacher would turn out to be the most amazing teacher ever. She taught me how to be an incredibly successful student and how to really appreciate science. My eighth-grade year has been the best so far, and I will never want to stop measuring the sun.