International Project "Stick"

 In April-May 2023 the students of the International Academy of Iraq  (grade 3B) participated in an international project "Stick". The project was organized by Ricardo Lopez, a teacher from Argentina. 

"Stick" is a collaborative project of international scope that invites students and their teachers to repeat the experience of measuring the circumference of the Earth as Eratosthenes did 2200 years ago, using simply a stick, a lot of imagination, and a little information.

A little of history.

Eratosthenes determined the earth's size by observing known phenomena and applying basic arithmetic and geometry to them. Here's how he did it. While in Syene, Egypt (known today as Aswan), he noticed that the sun's rays shone directly down a well, casting no shadow at all. From this, he concluded that the sun was directly overhead at Syene. On the same date in Alexandria, a rod perpendicular to the ground cast a shadow that was 7° 12' from perpendicular.

Eratosthenes then divided 360° by 7° 12' and determined that 7° 12' was 1/50th of a circle. Now all he had to do was find the distance from Syene to Alexandria and multiply it by 50 to get the earth's circumference. Eratosthenes' methods were simple but effective. All he needed to know was the distance between two locations and what percentage of a circle this distance constituted.

The main objective is to measure the perimeter of the Earth, in a similar way to that used by Eratosthenes more than 2 thousand years ago.

For this, each group of students and their teachers have to measure the height and shadow of a stick during the solar midday. Each school will share the values of its measurements by completing the spreadsheet created in Google.

This activity will allow students to know the old units of longitude, the inconveniences of their use, and why the convenience of using the current measures of the International System of Measurements.

In addition, make concrete use of mathematics, practice experimentation to obtain information about nature, and feel part of a joint project involving students from distant places.

 Core objectives

• describe the different units of length.
• describe the geometry of how the sun's rays strike the Earth at different latitudes.
• describe how the perimeter of the Earth was, measured for the first time thousands of years ago.
• describe how to determine when it is midday in the place where one lives.
• measure the angle formed by the sun's rays with the vertical in a given place at solar noon
• calculate the circumference of a terrestrial meridian
• being a part of a collaborative project, in which, with the contribution of several groups, an objective can be reached (in this case, measuring the circumference of the Earth)

Collateral objectives

• integrate knowledge from different areas
• know an ancient culture
• express information in English
• prepare a video to expose the experience

Introductory stage

Students were coloring the project logo and sharing their excitement about the way of measuring the circumference of the Earth.

So, on May 11, 2023, the students of grade 3B of the International Academy of Iraq did the measurement for the project.

Students prepared the information about the latitude of the school.

And about the solar noon in Basra, Iraq.

The class was divided into mini-groups. Each group was responsible for measuring the stick's shadow at a certain time and making notes about its lengths.

At 11.35 we put the stick 62 cm long perpendicularly to the ground and started measuring the shadow every 2 minutes.

Mohammed Ali is measuring the length of the stick. It is 62 cm long.

Group 1 11.35 Ali Aqueel and Abbas Sadeq

Measuring results

Group 2 11.37 Firas Baha, Laith Ahmed

Measuring results

Group 3 11.39 Miqdad Faleh, Hussein Ali, Yusuf Hassanen

Measuring results

Group 4 11.41 Mustafa Mohammed, Aasf

Measuring results

Group 5 11.43 Reema Mohammed, Shams Mahmood

Measuring results

Group 6 11.45 (Solar noon) Sama Mustafa, Muriyat Haider

Measuring results

Group 7 11.47 Yara Odeh, Fatima Muhannad, Shams Mustafa

Measuring results

Group 8 11.49 Lina Shaban, Omulbaneen Muhannad

Measuring results

Group 9 11.51 Taleen Hussein, Yusr Jaber

Group 10, 11.53 Zainab Ahmed, Omulbaneed Ibadi

Measuring results

Group 11 Rakan Ali, Zainalabdeen Basil (measuring results)

Some pictures from the event.

The results of our measuring were shown in the common spreadsheet.

All the schools that were participating in this project are marked on a specially made map. The map is interactive. By clicking on the logo you can read the information about the schools-participants and see the photos.

From the map you can see, that Iraqi students were working together with students from different countries. The teachers' names are in parentheses.

PORTUGAL, LISBOA, PONTINHA  Escola Básica da Pontinha (Sandra Costa)

ESPAÑA ,CORDOBA , IES Grupo Cántico   (Juan Antonio Gavilán Sánchez )

CATALUÑA ,SALT , Col.legi Pompeu Fabra (Mariona Rispau , Marta Prat) 2023

ITALIA , Isis Europa, Pomigliano D’Arco,(Sabrina Nappi)

ROMANIA , SCORNICESTI , Secondary School Gh. Popescu ( IULIANA TRASCA)

UKRANIA, School №27 (Olena Sukhotska)

TURQUIA , Toplum College , Antalya  (Nataliya Maslova)

GEORGIA , Cervantesi Gymnasium (Tinatin Laghidze)

ARMENIA , N11 After W.Saroyan , Hrazdan , (Alesa Durgaryan)

ISRAEL , iEARN- Israel (Ruth Hotzen)

ISRAEL , Alnoor junior high school (Nawal abu Rabeah)

NORT MACEDONIA , Primary school "Tihomir Milosevski" , Skopje (Ankica Spasova)

INDIA , Goraya (Nisha Rani)

INDIA , Ramagya School Dadri, India (Taruna Kapoor)

INDIA , Veera Savarkar Netaji Matriculation school , Agaram, Chennai , (Muralidharan Venugopalan )

TAIWAN  , Hebin Elementary School, Kaohsiung (Thefonz Hsieh)

TAIWAN , Deguang Catholic High School , Tainan, (Petty Wu)

JAPAN , Yokosuka Gakuin Elementary School,  (Shino Abe)