Day 16: My sunflower made some significant changes almost overnight. Between the two leaves at the top of my plant sprouted what seems to be the beginning of an extension of the stem. I am no sunflower expert so for all I know it could soon open up to a big flower. Below is a picture of my plant, as you can see it is nice and happy sitting in the sun.

Sunflower diary

Initially I was very skeptical on whether or not my sunflower seed would ever sprout. I left on Thursday morning in order to go to Detroit with my lacrosse team for the weekend. When I returned my seed had still not sprouted at all. This was about 6-7 days in. A few days later, day 10, my sunflower showed signs of life and popped out of the soil!

Day 10: My sunflower popped out about an inch. The soil looked a little more dry than usual and I would imagine that the little guy was very thirsty.

Solar Trajectory

Eric Yoggy

2/11/14

 

Objective:        To determine the location of the sun in the sky by measuring a fixed object. In this case, I used a light pole and measured the shadow it cast. Throughout the day I recorded the changes in the shadow.

 

Study Site:      We found a light pole on College Street and used its shadow for measurement.

 

Materials:        1. Notebook

2. Pen

3. Tape measure

4. Light pole

5. Compass application on the iPhone

6. Suncalc.net

7. Lab Partner: Cole Mitchell and Sarah Brown

 

Methods:         1. We found a light pole

2. We measured the height of the light pole

3. We measured the shadow of the light pole six times on January 25.

4. We used the compass application on my iPhone to measure the direction the sun was shining

5. We recorded the information and used tangent to find the angle of the sun at each point during the day.

 

Calculations:   The pole height and shadow length are measured in inches. I used the tangent function, which is the length of the side opposite of the hypotenuse divided by the length of the side adjacent to the hypotenuse multiplied times tangent.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                                                                   

TIME	POLE HEIGHT	SHADOW LENGTH	DIRECTION (DEGREES)	SUN ANGLE (DEGREES)
9:45	210	274	217	37.46
10:45	210	204	196	45.83
11:45	210	157	192	53.21
12:47	210	140	116	56.3
1:42	210	158	118	53.04
4:40	210	383	68	28.73

 

 

Conclusion:     At 12:47 pm, the sun was close to directly over our heads. I put our measurements into suncalc.net, which showed me that the sun was never directly over our heads because of the season we are in and the tilt of the Earth. Logically thinking as well, if the sun were to be directly over the pole, there would be no shadow.

 

http://www.suncalc.net/#/32.8407,-83.6324,10/2014.02.06/16:27