Shifting Shadows Throughout the Day

This series of photos show a flagpole casting its shadow at four different times of day. The flagpole shadow “moves” across the ground as the earth rotates.

• Why do shadows change throughout the day?

• Why is the sun in different places in the sky at different times of the day?
• What patterns do you see in the sky?
• How does observing a pattern help us?

Students could:

• Trace shadows of an object at different times of the day to see how the location of the sun changes the position of the shadow.
• Use a sundial to make connections between the sun’s position and the time of day.
• Brainstorm where the sun goes during the night.
• Observe the moon’s location during the day.

• PBS LearningMedia | Bringing the Universe to America's Classrooms: Earth and Space Science | Predictable Patterns in the Sky: Short video of the sun moving across the sky.
• PBS LearningMedia | Bringing the Universe to America's Classrooms: Earth and Space Science | Changes in the Sky: An interactive lesson exploring real-life and animated views illustrating the daily patterns of motion of the sun, moon and stars in the sky.
• PBS LearningMedia | Bringing the Universe to America's Classrooms: Earth and Space Science | Peep Sees Patterns in the Sky: Interact with the animated storybook to observe and predict patterns of the sun, moon and stars over a day and analyze evidence of the apparent movement of the sun along the arc-like path over a day in a time-lapse video.
• PBS LearningMedia | PreK-12 Resources for New School Routines: Shifting Shadows: Explore how the position of the Sun in the sky affects shadows on Earth’s surface in this live-action video from PEEP and the Big Wide World. Use the video to observe evidence of the relationship between the Sun and shadows and to describe how the position of the Sun in the sky results in changes in the size and direction of shadows.
• PBS LearningMedia | Go West Young Peep: Nine-minute video about Chirp and Peep, who follow their shadows throughout the day.