Today, we worked mainly on how to roughly estimate the height of a tall light post, and we did that by using a shadow. By looking at the shadow and the "triangle" the pole made, and comparing it to a ruler as an equivalent, we could divide the shadow of the pole by the shadow of the 1 meter ruler to get the answer, which was 25 meters, while our group got ≈ 30.82 meters. As the ratio of the shadow of the pole to the pole is 22.5 : X, and the ruler was 0.73 : 1 meter, if you divided 22.5 by 0.73, you would get the approximate length of the pole. However, as we took the measurements five minutes apart, and the sun wasn't in a perfect position to measure the best, we did not get very close to the heigh of the pole, which was actually 25 meters.
Hi Aiden,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this blog. It is a very good start but it could be revised to make it more accurately describe/explain the task and your answer. Please see below for some comments that can help you to improve the blog.
- "measure the height of an unknown building": you are estimating (not measuring) the height of a known building (it is one of the SAS gyms)
- I like how you included a visual, however, your visual doesn't really illustrate this scenario. I don't believe that you measured the angle between the ground and top of the structure. Also, was the distance between you and the structure 71 ft? You should find a more appropriate picture from the internet and modify it to fit this scenario (or make your own).
- Please explain why the method that you used works (2 similar triangles) and be more specific on how you got your answer.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Ms. Wang