Observing and Measuring Shadows

Yesterday we carried out an investigation into whether shadows change over the course of a day. At 9.30 we went into the carpark (where we could be sure that our chalking couldn't be rubbed off) and drew a line showing where our shadow was and measured it. Over the course of the day we went out again and looked at our shadows again and recorded their direction and length. We were amazed that the shadows got gradually shorter up until midday and then got gradually longer again up until the end of the school day.

Do you what this means and why this is?

We came up with the statement; the lower the sun the longer the shadow and the higher the sun the shorter the shadow.

Photos of our sundial

We are finding out lots of exciting things by observing our sundial. We are observing what has happened every hour. Mrs Collin has challenged us to use the sundial to meet her on the field at 1pm to make the next observation. Do you think we will be there?

Here are some photos of our sundial:

Scarlet Macaw Sundial

If you take a look in the middle of the field today you will see something really strange.

We have made a sundial. It is very simple and is made of a garden cane, wool and matchsticks. We are using it to observe how the sun moves over the course of a day so watch this space...

Me and my Shadow

To start off our topic on shadows, we spent some time playing! We used torches, paper and our hands to create different types of shadows and then had to work out how we could make the shadows bigger or smaller or a certain shape.

Next we went outside. We arranged ourselves into groups and were given a roll of paper, pens, scissors and masking tape and were told that we needed to draw our shadows on the paper.

This was quite an interesting task as some of us taped down the paper but couldn't see our shadow on it, it was still on the playground. So what could we do? Well we worked out that we had to look at the direction of the sun and tape the paper down in the right direction!

We enjoyed looking at the outline of different people's shadows and Emelia found that when she stood back in the place she had been a little later, her shadow had moved. We were quite surprised at this but why do you think that happened?

Here are some photos of us having fun with shadows:

The sun is shining!

Isn't it great that the sun is shining? In fact it is great news for our first topic this term which is Sun and Shadows which obviously involves a lot of work outside! In this topic we are going to learn about how shadows are formed and how shadows change using our scientific skills of questionning, testing, observing and measuring and problem solving.

To get you going, here are a couple of websites that you might like to look at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/physical_processes/light_shadows/read1.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/physical_processes/light_shadows/play.shtml