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Why are shadows longer in the fall?

Weekly Quest No. 4 · Shadow Hunters. Shadow tag, hand-shadow puppets, a stick clock, a silhouette portrait and a stamp card. JK to Grade 8, 20–40 minutes.
Long shadows of an adult and a child stretched across pale grey paving stones on a sunny day.
Long shadows of an adult and a child stretched across pale grey paving stones on a sunny day.

WEEKLY QUEST · No. 4 · SHADOW HUNTERS

MoveMakeExplore20–40 minutesJK–Grade 8Science · Math

Explore: read this aloud

Four-frame comic: the sun shines past a child and a shadow lies on the ground behind them; in summer the sun is high and the shadow is short; in fall the sun is low and the shadow is long; over a day the sun climbs and sinks: a stick's shadow is long in the morning, short at midday and long again in the afternoon.

A shadow is the spot where your body blocks the light. When the sun is high in the sky, like at lunchtime in summer, your shadow is short. In fall the sun stays lower in the sky all day, so it shines at more of a slant, and your shadow stretches out long. Shadows are shortest around the middle of the day and longest in the morning and late afternoon. Never look straight at the sun.

The whoa moment: At lunchtime in early November, a 1 m stick in Barrie casts a shadow about 1.7 m long. In late June, its lunchtime shadow is under half a metre.

What's in the Quest

Move: Shadow Tag

  1. The tagger steps on shadows, not people.
  2. Shadow stepped on? Freeze!
  3. A friend runs through your shadow: you're free.
  4. Swap taggers and play again.

Weather swap: Cloudy or rainy? Play in a dim room with a lamp on the floor.

Make: Shadow Puppets + Stick Clock

  1. Shine a flashlight on a wall. Make animals.
  2. Guess first, then move the light closer, then farther.
  3. Outside: push a stick into sunny ground.
  4. Every hour, put a stone at the shadow's tip.

Good to know: Same stick, same spot all day. A cloudy hour? Skip it. Indoor swap: tape a pencil upright on a sunny windowsill and mark its shadow tip with tape.

Make: Silhouette Portrait

  1. Tape paper to a wall. Shine a lamp at it.
  2. Sit sideways between lamp and wall.
  3. A grown-up traces the outline of your face.
  4. Cut it out. Trace on black paper. Glue on page 4.

Good to know: Lean against a chair back to hold still. A wobbly line is fine.

For the littlest (JK and SK)

Make your shadow wave, jump and hide. Can you make it big? Small?

★ Go further (Grades 6–8, or anyone who wants more)

Use a stick and a tape measure to track the length and direction of a shadow every hour from 9:00 to 4:00, find the shortest shadow, and work out how high the sun was with a scale drawing and a protractor. Then compare with Barrie's noon sun through the year (69° in June, 22° in December) and explain why the same stick's December shadow is more than six times as long as June's.

Safety: Never look straight at the sun, even with sunglasses. Play tag on open grass, away from roads. Lamps get hot: a grown-up sets them up. A grown-up helps little ones cut.

Pick one, or do them all. Any order. Then stamp the card: I moved · I made · I explored · I told someone what I found.

What the pages look like

Page 2 of the printable: My Shadow Lab

Four printable pages: the grown-up page with every step, a record page, a Go further page in field-notes style, and a make page with the stamp card.

Curious Kite · All Quests · Change the method. Not the child.