Istituto Comprensivo “Giorgio
Castriota” (3ª A), S. Marzano di S. Giuseppe, Taranto, Italy
Hi folks,
we are the 3ª A’s students (13 years old) from the Istituto Comprensivo
“Giorgio Castriota” , a school for 3-5 years, 6-10 years and 11-13 years
old students, in S. Marzano di S. Giuseppe, Taranto, Italy. “3ª” means the
third level (13 years old ) of Italian Middle schools, while “A” means the
A course (in our school there are 4 courses: A, B, C, D; every course have
3 level: 1ª 11 years old, 2ª 12 years old, 3ª 13 years old students).
During this project, in sunny days (25 °C), we have first collected the
sunrise and sunset data each day from our local newspaper “Corriere del
Giorno”, Taranto and the daily temperature with a thermometer; then we
have analyzed the collected data and have used material models to
understand astronomy’s concepts.
We have analyzed all the cecked final data and we have found that there
are some evidences for a correlation between daylight and latitude (r=
0,98) as we supposed to be: daylight descreases when latitude increases.
There is also a correlation in the graph average temperature vs. latitude
(r= 0,78 lat South and r= 0,74 lat North): temperature decreases when
latitude increases. So daylight and temperature have the same trend.
It has been more difficult to understand the reasons why there are these
differences in latitude among the data. A good way to understand this fact
is to use a material model of Earth’s rotation and to consider that
Earth’s axis is inclined during rotation of the planet. So sun rays are
perpendicular to Equator but makes different angles when latitude
increases. Perpendicular rays are very hot because heat spreads in a
little area; when sun rays are not perpendicular heat spreads in a wide
area. We have also seen that terminator changes with latitude and this may
explain differences in daylight.
We have learned a lot of things during this project: how to use Excell
software to investigate nature’s laws and to collaborate with e-students,
the importance of models in the science, the Internet way to go out from
our classroom and to practice English as Italian students.
For the next issue of this project we suggest to test daylight and average
temperature vs month.
See you
E-mail:
s.m.s.castriota@libero.it
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