GEOMETRY CAN TAKE US TO THE MOON.....?

Edoardo Leonid and Giulio will show us how:
(Science in School - The European journal for science teachers- Spring 2016 Issue 35)

Imagine stretching your arm out and looking at your thumb, first with one eye, then with the other. The apparent shift of your thumb with respect to the background is called parallax.

The same principle applies if two different schools look at the Moon: they will see it slightly shifted with respect to the stars in the background 

from 2 observers A and B the Moon will be seen in two different positions in the sky,and to calculate the real position we need to use basilar trigonometry.

For the approximation to be as exact as possible the observation points should be at the same longitude and the moon should be in the highest point.

If Moon angle with celestial equator is equal to the average of latitudes, ABM triangle is an isosceles triangle (M=moon)

Considering the straight lines AM(a) and BM(a) almost parallel as AM(b) and BM(b) we would know that angle alpha=alpha(1).

If we measure the alpha angle + another angle in triangle ABM we can calculate all the distances

 

MATERIAL

the only necessary material it's a camera to take pictures

 

PROCEDURE

1.Find a school in your same longitude

2.agree to the exact times for the moon observations

3.clear skies and take several images of the moon following the predefined time schedule

 

DISCUSSION

The measurements will not be perfect because:

-the overexposure of the moon’s disk there is the imprecision in spotting the shift of the moon:

-the points are not lying in a same plane;

-the camera lenses are make distortions;

-observation conditions;

-atmospheric refraction;

-time synchronization.

 

LET'S TRY GUYS!