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The Physics Teacher -- January 2012 -- Volume 50, Issue 1, pp. 40

Diurnal Astronomy: Using Sticks and Threads to Find Our Latitude on Earth

Néstor Camino1 and Alejandro Gangui2

1Universidad National de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco, Esquel, Argentina
2IAFE/Conicet and Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina

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It is well known that the length and orientation of a shadow cast by a vertical gnomon depends on the time of the day and on the season of the year. But it also depends on the latitude of the site of observation. During the equinoxes, the temporal sequence of the shadows cast by each of the points that form any object follows a straight line from west to east. A simple construction using sticks and threads can be used to materialize the plane of the celestial equators local projection, giving us a way to calculate our astronomical latitude during daytime with high precision.

© 2012 American Association of Physics Teachers

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our students and collaborators from Esquel and Buenos Aires, and our colleagues from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, members of the CTS Project “Education of Astronomy,” for helping us prepare and carry out the equinox activities described in this paper. A.G. acknowledges support from Conicet and from the University of Buenos Aires.

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

astronomy, Earth rotation, physics education, student experiments

PACS

  • 01.50.My

    Demonstration experiments and apparatus

History
Online Dec 2011

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0031-921X (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Association of Physics Teachers

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.3670084

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