Fleet Week Latitude/ Longitude Experiment
STEM for Service STEM center Experiment during fleet week using a Gnomon to find longitude and latitude . We used a gnomon which is simply a vertical pole with a round ball on top of a dowel where the equator of ball at 15 inches. The experiment tracked the the center of the ellipse shaped shadow cast by the ball from 10:33 am to 1:23 pm.
The shortest length of shadow, local noon, we estimated after plotting the tick marks was 5.125 inches at 12:50 pm. The experiment table was disturbed around 12:55PM introducing potential error.
The experiment latitude was 40Deg, 3 min, 49sec vs Google maps 40Deg 45 min, 19 sec. and error of just 0 deg, 41min, 20sec.
The experiment longitude was -73deg, 12 min, 45 sec, vs Google maps of -73 deg, 34min, 35 sec an error of just 0 deg, 22min, 50 sec.