Report from SPACE club, Hillwoods Academy on winter solstice day

Report on winter solstice day activities

Hillwoods academy, preet vihar SPACE club celebrated the winter solstice in a different way! This year we decided to do eratosthenes experiment and local noon experiment in tandem with another brach of our school in Gandhinagar, Gujrat where the school happens to be very close to tropic of Cancer! We planned to do the local noon finding at both the places of winter solstice day with gnomons of different shapes and sizes to make it more interesting. Mr. C B Devgun, President SPACE was invited on 20^thDecember to give a talk on the winter solstice day and what students can do on that day. He interacted with students of SPACE club and other students and suggested them to find local noon with shadow formation of various objects.

On the day of winter solstice, around 6 teams from Hillwoods preet Vihar and 4 teams from Hillwoods Gandhinagar took the readings of the local noon. Hillwoods academy preet vihar team was under the guidance of Babita Kundalia, Coordinator, SPACE club. Various gnomons like gnomon stick provided by SPACE, basket ball pole, statue of liberty model, cricket stumps, road sighs were used to take the shadow measurements and students really enjoyed doing the shadow experiment! Hillwoods academy teams found the sunangle to be 52 degrees and Gandhinagar students found it to be 47 degrees as reported by them in evening. That turns out to be a difference of 5 degrees in latitude in both the schools (which was later verified from google earth)!! Local noon timings between both the schools were found to be around 18 minutes which converts to 4.5 degrees in longitude difference. Earth circumference was also measured taking these readings into consideration. A detailed report with readings will be soon made and sent.

We are attaching the images from the activity in the Hillwoods academy preet vihar. Pictures from the Gandhinagar branch are awaited. Students really enjoyed doing the experiment and will repeat the same again during equinox days and summer solstice day. We would like to thank SPACE for providing the technical support for the event.