Today Yahaira and I worked on earning some of here patches on diy.org. She needed to do one more project to earn her Astronomer patch. We decided to make and astrolabe. I had never made, nor used one, before. I must say, it was a lot of fun to learn how to use it alongside Yahaira! I got the template here. I don't have a printer, so I just traced the thing right off of my computer screen. We then cut it out and glued it to some cardboard. With no tape, we McGuivered it and used Band-Aids. No string, no problem! Mint floss does the trick. We took a heart charm that is missing the necklace and used that as the weight. We had a leftover straw from smoothie we had the other day, so this was a definite up-cycle craft too!
Yahaira chose to measure this light pole right outside our apartment.
To use the astrolabe, you look through the straw at the top of the object you wish to measure. Record the degree that the string dangles at (28 degrees).
We didn't know how far away from the light pole we were, so we flipped the astrolabe over and looked through the straw where the object and ground met. We recorded the angle measurement (10 degrees).
Then it was back inside to figure out how these angle measurements would tell us how far away we were and how tall the light pole was!
Here is the video she used for her project submission.
How to Use an Astrolabe:
- Determine (or estimate) the height of your eye-level. Yahaira's was about 4 inches less than her total height.
- Determine if you need to find out the distance from the object as well as the height of the object. *If you need to find the distance from the object do step 3, if not, skip to step 4.*
- WITH THE STRING HOLE CLOSEST TO YOUR FACE, look through the straw at where the object and ground meet; record the angle that the string is hanging at.
- WITH THE STRING HOLE CLOSEST FARTHEST FROM YOUR FACE (this requires the astrolabe to be looked through the opposite end that was used in step 3), look through the straw at the top of the object being measured; record the angle that the string is hanging at.
- Now that you have the angle measurements, find the tangents of each angle (make sure you use degrees and NOT radians to calculate the tangents). *There are plenty of free tangent calculators on the internet.*
- To find the distance from the object (which you need to know to find the object height), divide your eye-level height by the tangent of your angle from step #3 (make sure it's the correct tangent from step#5).
- To find the height of the object, multiply your answer from step #6 (or your known distance from object) by the tangent of your angle from step #4 (make sure it's the correct tangent from step #5) then add this to your eye-level height.
Enjoy your learning adventure and let me know how it works out for you in the comments below!
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