Shadows, Sun and Scientists

We were doing a whole lot of noticing this morning being the keen scientists that we are.  Did you know that leaves have lines like our palms have lines!? (Thanks Sarah for making that link).  While we were playing shadow tag for fitness we thought, hey why don't we draw around our shadows and see what happens to them over the day!   The shadows in the photo's below are at 2pm. The blue outline was drawn at 10am.  We made sure we stood in the same place both times.

We noticed:

• The sun was on a different side of the sky at 2pm.  Everyone said the sun moved - this will be something to explore while we study space this term.
• The sun was 'behind' (on the base side of) the shadow both times.  If you are facing your shadow the sun is behind you.  
• At 10am we could see the moon.  It was shaped like a banana and was almost opposite the sun.
• Our shadows were a little bit shorter at 2pm.  They were still gigantic though compared to us!
• At 2pm we had no shadow sometimes.  This happened when there was 'no sun'.  We decided this was because the clouds covered the sun.  We are sure now the sun makes our shadows.

When we looked at this photo we noticed Aikona, Elina, Tayla and Luque's shadows are all going in the same direction.  They all look like they are standing in a line, but the four of them are not!  Hmmm...

Aikona came up with a great idea to draw an arrow showing the direction his shadow moved.  The yellow outline is at 2pm.

We wonder what happens to our shadow, between the two shadows?  Some of us think our shadows will get bigger, some of us think they will get smaller and some of us think they will disappear.  We will have to see tomorrow and have a look at 12pm!  What do you think?

Other thoughts we had were: are there shadows at night - we think yes because of the moon.  We also started to think about how Jemima (our wonderful friend who moved to England) sleeps when we are awake - in some parts of the world it is night while in others it is day.  Something to explore!!!!!

Until next time, this is A3 Mad Scientists over and out.