Name

Professor

Course

Date

The size of the sun experiment

The main aim of the experiment was to measure the diameter of the sun

The experiment was carried out on daylight at 11.30am.

Materials used were:

• Cardboard centre tube of a roll of foil
• White card
• The sewing pin
• Graph paper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Masking tape

Method

The cardboard tube was cut so that it was 150mm long. Then we cut a small viewing hole in the side of the tube. A pencil was used to trace the end of the tube on the white card and the graph paper. Both circles were carefully cut and attached to the end of the tube and the distance from one end to another end was accurately measured. Then the pin was used to put a small hole in the center of the card at the end. The viewer was taken outside and the end of the pinhole pointed at the sun while looking through the viewing window at the graph paper. A small circular image of the sun appeared on the graph paper. We used the line on the graph paper to measure the diameter of the image. It is important to note that in the viewer model the position of the pinhole correspond to the position of the earth and the distance from the hole to graph paper represents earth-sun distance. We calculated the actual diameter of the sun by using d= (h ×r)/l formulae.

Calculation:

r=149,600,000

d= (h ×r)/l    where h is the height of the image; r is the box sun distance; d is diameter of the sun and L is the length of the box.

In the experiment carried out we found the value of h as 15, 20, 25, 45, 50, and 60 and value of w is 1.2, 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4 and 0.3 respectively.

We found out that the average of h is 35.8333, and the average of wid.............

Name

Professor

Course

Date

The size of the sun experiment

The main aim of the experiment was to measure the diameter of the sun

The experiment was carried out on daylight at 11.30am.

Materials used were:

• Cardboard centre tube of a roll of foil
• White card
• The sewing pin
• Graph paper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Masking tape

Method

The cardboard tube was cut so that it was 150mm long. Then we cut a small viewing hole in the side of the tube. A pencil was used to trace the end of the tube on the white card and the graph paper. Both circles were carefully cut and attached to the end of the tube and the distance from one end to another end was accurately measured. Then the pin was used to put a small hole in the center of the card at the end. The viewer was taken outside and the end of the pinhole pointed at the sun while looking through the viewing window at the graph paper. A small circular image of the sun appeared on the graph paper. We used the line on the graph paper to measure the diameter of the image. It is important to note that in the viewer model the position of the pinhole correspond to the position of the earth and the distance from the hole to graph paper represents earth-sun distance. We calculated the actual diameter of the sun by using d= (h ×r)/l formulae.

Calculation:

r=149,600,000

d= (h ×r)/l    where h is the height of the image; r is the box sun distance; d is diameter of the sun and L is the length of the box.

In the experiment carried out we found the value of h as 15, 20, 25, 45, 50, and 60 and value of w is 1.2, 1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4 and 0.3 respectively.

We found out that the average of h is 35.8333, and the average of wid.............