KIds from around the world measuring the Circumference of the Earth
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KIds from around the world measuring the Circumference of the Earth
 
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The Goal of the Noon Day Project is to have students measure the circumference of the earth using a method that was first used by Eratosthenes over 2000 years ago. Students at various sites around the world will measure shadows cast by a meter stick and compare their results. From this data students will be able to calculate the circumference of the earth. Click here to get to their site and register. Watch the Carl Sagan video, its a treat. Thanks to Ihor Charischak for pointing this out. Stephen _______________________________________________ squeakland mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland |
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But consider a flat Earth and a low small sun directly over the well. This will yield exactly Eratosthenes' result. The key here, which I've never seen mentioned in any books for children, is that the Greeks had to have a very good set of reasons for thinking the Earth round and the sun large enough and far enough away (and they did). I gave a talk on how they did this in the Kyoto Prize lecture followups in San Diego in 2005. Aristarchus was one of several key figures. The shame of it is that for both math and science learning, the important heuristic of trying to identify all the possible cases for a result is never encountered by the children (or most adults) who have read about
Eratosthenes. Cheers, Alan
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Re: [IAEP] [NaturalMath] KIds from around the world measuring the Circumference of the Earth
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Here is a link to Alan's talk, his reference to Eratostenes starts at around 51:50.
Alan, do you still have a copy of the presentation? Stephen
On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 12:18 AM, Alan Kay <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Hi Jason I finally chased it down via "Alan Kay Kyoto Symposium" This is likely to be very frustrating because they gave me a bad wearable microphone -- it is barely understandable when I'm at the podium, and not at all when I'm moving around away from the podium mike. However, I might be able to find the material (it was done entirely using Etoys as both the presentation and demo media). The talk was sneakily about thinking ... via how the Greeks were able to transcend our messed up genetic brains and minds. To me, how
they were able to get the first really accurate picture of our situation in the universe, not just of a round Earth of a certain size, but of the Earth's relation to the Moon and the Sun -- quite bypassing normal commonsense and cultural reasoning -- is one of the most thrilling episodes in our intellectual history. And, it was just there for an instant, roughly during the Alexandrian Greeks period. Cheers, Alan
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In reply to this post by alanone1
On Thursday 29 Sep 2011 9:48:55 AM Alan Kay wrote:
> But consider a flat Earth and a low small sun directly over the well. This > will yield exactly Eratosthenes' result. The key here, which I've never > seen mentioned in any books for children, is that the Greeks had to have a > very good set of reasons for thinking the Earth round and the sun large > enough and far enough away (and they did). I believe the motivation for celestial measurements goes much farther into history to the beginnings of agriculture in Asia. Rice was the staple diet in this region but it is a water-intensive crop. Farmers were dependent on Monsoon rains. A single harvest was sufficient to feed the population for an entire year. But sowing even a week earlier or later could spell doom. So people started tracking movements of celestial objects like Sun and Moon to forecast the arrival of rains. This history is carried in many words in Indian languages - Varsha (rains, year), Maasa (moon, month) and so on. Tracing such connections over the millenia will be a lot more interesting than just using shadows to measure Earth's circumference. Without a framework, this exercise may just be performed, recorded and forgotten. It may not motivate students to ponder deeply on "why?". Regards .. Subbu _______________________________________________ squeakland mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland |
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