Group Members: Ellie, Milo, and Rainn
As a group, we were tasked with determining the height of the flag pole outside of our school.
To start, we followed the instructions to create our own clinometers. A clinometer is a tool that allows us to measure the angle of elevation or depression in a right triangle. We made ours by taking a protractor and taping a plastic straw along the straight edge, ensuring that it was as straight as possible and aligned with the ‘0’ line. We then threaded a string—with a paper clip acting as a weight—through the protractor’s center. Our clinometer was now ready to be used!
Before going outside to measure our angles, we had to measure from the ground to Milo’s eyes. We took this measurement because we would later have to add it to the height of the flag pole that we calculated. If we did not do this, then our measurements would have been 1.63m too short.
Now that we were prepared, we headed outside to the flag pole! We had to do this step twice because our first set of numbers was not adding up properly. The reason for this was that the type of protractor we used did not allow the string to move freely. The second time, we measured from 5m, 6m, 7m, 8m, and 10m. The angles for those distances were all roughly 6° apart.
5m – 28°
6m – 34°
7m – 40°
8m – 43°
10m – 50°
Now that we had all of our measurements, we got to do the fun part!
To calculate the opposite leg of our triangle, I used this formula:
tanθ = o/a
For example:
tan50°= x/10
(10)tan50° = x/10 (10)
11.9 = x
I then added the height of Milo’s eye level (1.63m)
11.9 + 1.63 = 13.5
13.5m is the final length of the flag pole with those measurements!
I then repeated this two more times with the measurements from 6m and 8m away.
My average height was 9.9 m
Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this lab because it gave us an opportunity to utilize the skills that we learned in class in real-life scenarios!
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