🌤️ Shadows through the day: the whole packet

🌤️ Shadows through the day · 1st–4th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 20 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change the time of day, then how long the shadow is will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🧴 An empty plastic bottle: 3, the same size, filled with water
• 🖍️ Sidewalk chalk
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler

Be safe: 🌳 Outside · 😎 Never look at the sun

1. On a sunny morning, stand three bottles of water in a row on a path or driveway.
2. Draw around the bottom of each bottle with chalk, so they always go back in the same place.
3. At 9 o'clock, mark the tip of each bottle's shadow with chalk.
4. Measure from each bottle to its mark, and write the numbers down.
5. Do the same at noon and at 3 o'clock.
6. Never look at the sun: look at the shadow on the ground.
7. Draw a bar for each time of day. When was the shadow shortest?

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Time of day   I measured: how long the shadow is (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: time of day along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: measure every hour from 9 to 3, and draw which way the shadow points at each time.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: how does a shadow change through the day?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the time of day would change how long the shadow is, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the time of day (9 in the morning, Noon, 3 in the afternoon) and measured how long the shadow is in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same bottles in the same spots and measuring from the bottom of each bottle the same, so only the time of day was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: 9 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: measure every hour from 9 to 3, and draw which way the shadow points at each time.