Working with light and shadows
<p>The observation of the behavior of sunlight when it encounters an opaque body and, consequently, the shadow it produces allows several considerations to be made.</p><p>First activity: In the school garden, pupils studied the apparent motion of the Sun by observing the movement of the shadow produced by a stick perpendicular to the ground. They drew on the ground the position of the shadow of the stick and measured every hour the angular distance between the different tracts. They verified that between one tract and the next there were always 15 degrees, which is the same angular distance between the meridians that make a time zone. Starting from this observation, the kids built a Sundial to determine the local time.</p><p>Second activity: Working with the Homothetic Globe, that is a globe freed from its support and inclined according to the parallel of the place where you are, and placing a toothpick right to the city on the Globe where you want to proceed with the observation, allows you to observe everything that happens regarding the behavior of light and shadows as an exact reproduction, in small, of what happens in reality: the Sun acts on the sphere/ world map, exactly the same way as on the sphere/ Earth. The students were able to observe how the Sun illuminates different regions of the Earth in real time, helping them to understand time zones. The Homothetic globe also allowed them to understand the alternation of seasons in our Planet.</p>