Final Report - December, 2003

We are reporting from the Saratoga Independent School, in Saratoga Springs, New York (43°04'N latitude and 73°46'W longitude). The students who participated in this project are a multiage age class made up of 4th--6th graders.
During the project we recorded the temperature from a thermometer that we placed on the shed in our playground. We put the thermometer on the western side so that it did not receive direct sunlight. We checked it at 12:00 PM each day between November 3-7. We checked in the local newspaper for the sunrise and sunset times. We then calculated the average minutes of daylight using the data that was gathered.
Our teacher gave us the longitude and latitude coordinates of 20 of the schools and we had to find their location on a map of the world. We took the data from the schools and made graphs to illustrate latitude vs sunlight and latitude vs temperature.
We compared our averages with other sites around the world and discovered that as we explored the data from schools further south of the equator the average number of minutes of daylight increased. For example, Australia received an average of 848 minutes of sunlight per day. We at the Saratoga Independent School in New York State received only 609 minutes of sunlight per day. We discussed the fact that the way the Earth is tilted on its axis causes the southern hemisphere to receive more sunlight.
When we interpreted the data concening the average temperature our results were not as consistent. We wanted to believe that the closer to the equator you were, the warmer it would be. This was mostly true, however some of the data did not support this conclusion. For example, it was warmer in Florida at 25.7 degrees latitude than it was in San Salvador at -2 degrees latitude. We came to the conclusion that the warmest temperatures were between -2 degrees latitude and 25 degrees latitude.
We enjoyed doing this project and are sharing our graphs and map with our parents tomorrow night.

E-mail: BK2SS@aol.com