Directions: Use the information provided and your knowledge of Earth and Space Sciences to answer the following questions. Show all work where necessary.
Directions: Use the information provided and your knowledge of Earth and Space Sciences to answer the following questions. Show all work where necessary.
On any given day, the sun moves through our sky in the same way as a star. It rises somewhere along the eastern horizon and sets somewhere in the west. If you live at a mid-northern latitude (most of North America, Europe, Asia, and northern Africa), you always see the noon sun somewhere in the southern sky.
But as the weeks and months pass, you'll notice that the sun's motion isn't quite the same as that of any star. For one thing, the sun takes a full 24 hours to make a complete circle around the celestial sphere, instead of just 23 hours, 56 minutes. For obvious reasons, we define our day based on the motion of the sun, not the stars. Moreover, the location of the sun's path across the sky varies with the seasons.
Figure 1.
Source: https://www.katrinaaxford.com/the-world-map.html
The sun appears to move along with the celestial sphere on any given day, but follows different circles at different times of the year: most northerly at the June solstice and most southerly at the December solstice. At the equinoxes, the sun's path follows the celestial equator.
You may have noticed two special lines of latitude on a globe of the world: One in the Northern Hemisphere called the Tropic of Cancer at
Source: https://physics.weber.edu/schroeder/ua/sunandseasons.html
Describe how the position of the Sun changes in the sky from morning to afternoon.
When the Sun appears highest in the sky, what time of day is it?
Students recorded shadow lengths of a flagpole during one school day.
Time | Shadow Length (m) |
|---|---|
9:00 AM | 6.2 |
12:00 PM | 3.1 |
3:00 PM | 5.8 |
What pattern do you notice in the data?
Claim: The Sun’s position in the sky changes throughout the day.
Evidence:
Explain what you could observe about shadows or the Sun’s position that supports this claim.
Reasoning:
Explain how your evidence shows that the Sun’s position changes throughout the day.
If a student’s shadow is pointing west, where is the Sun in the sky?