Final Report - June, 2003

Dear Sun Times participants,

Our 4th grade class recorded daily temperatures and photoperiod for our school's location. Then we learned how to average all the data, so we could submit it to the project website. We tracked 10 schools all over the world in different hemispheres. Then we compared their average temperatures and photoperiod with ours. Most of us predicted that the days would be longer and hotter in locations nearer to the equator and that in locations farther away from the equator, the days would be shorter and colder. What we found out is that our predictions were only partly correct. Once we graphed the data from the 10 schools we tracked, we began to see that schools located in the northern hemisphere had longer and warmer days and that the schools in the southern hemisphere had shorter days and cooler temperatures. We also saw variations in that data, too. We wondered about other variables that might affect the temperatures we were recording. Here in Arizona where there are 3 main land regions, we know how much the temperature is different between our desert region and our mountain region, and we have learned that that difference has to do with the enormous difference in elevation of the land. Here in Lakeside, we live at almost 7,000 feet in elevation above sea level, but in Phoenix, only 4 hours away, the elevation is about 1,700 feet above sea level. We think that elevation might have something to do with the small differences in locations at about the same latitude.

We enjoyed participating in this project and learned more about the seasons and the earth's hemispheres. Because our school year ends earlier than this project, we decided that our teacher, Mrs. Jorgenson, would have to be the one to send our final report, because we would be out of school already!

E-mail: swinne@u98.k12.me.us