Tracking Shadows and the Sun's Position

Crash Course Kids

This engaging educational video explores the science behind shadows and how they change throughout the day based on the sun's position. Hosted by Sabrina Cruz, the lesson begins by defining a shadow as a dark area created when a solid object blocks light. It explains that while shadows might seem to have a mind of their own, their movement is actually caused by the Earth's rotation, which makes the sun appear to move across the sky from east to west. The video conducts a virtual experiment using a stationary lamp post to observe shadow patterns from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Through this investigation, students visualize how shadows are long and point west in the morning, become shortest at noon, and grow long again pointing east in the afternoon. The lesson connects these observations to historical practices, mentioning how ancient civilizations used these predictable patterns to tell time, effectively using the sun as a giant clock. For the classroom, this video is an excellent resource for bridging Earth science and data analysis. It introduces bar graphs to interpret the observational data, helping students see the mathematical relationship between time of day and shadow length. By connecting abstract concepts like planetary rotation to concrete, observable phenomena like shadows, it provides a practical foundation for understanding the Earth-Sun system.