April 5, 2006

Dear Fellow Researchers:

We are students of MacKinnon Middle School, in Wharton, New Jersey. We are in sixth grade. The people in our group are Danny, Nick, Anthony, David, and Richard. The teachers helping us are Mr.McGrail, Mrs. Leary and, Ms.Corbett. We are going to do the noon day project. We will be using a meter stick, a bucket full of sand, a plumb line, and a piece of paper, markers, and a protractor.

This afternoon we will go outside to do the project. Mrs. Leary will tell us the directions on what to do. We will place the piece of paper flat on the ground. Then we will put the sand bucket at the end of the paper. We will make sure that the shadow is on the piece of paper. When Mrs. Leary says to take the measurement, we will take a measurement of the shadow of the meter stick.

One person of the group will make sure the plumb line is always straight; another person will make sure the paper stays down because it’s windy, and someone else will take measure of the shadow. When high noon comes around the shadow of the meter stick will be at its shortest. After that, we will find out what the angle measurement is.

After we found this we will look at the results that you got in Chesapeake. Then we will see how far away Chesapeake is from