England-2011-labs
Lab 1: Where Am I?
Overview
There are lots of interesting and historic places in Greenwich, there are also some places that are fairly ordinary. Working in your lab groups (see below) you will locate one such place, determine it's latitude and longitude a couple of different ways, determine the altitude a couple of different ways, and measure the shortest distance from that point to the Prime Meridian.
Once you have completed the data collection in Greenwich you and your lab partners will analyze the data and describe the results in a lab report which will be due next week.
Make sure that at least one person in each lab group brings a laptop with them to Greenwich. It will make some aspects of the lab much easier. If you have a minute to install Google Earth before tomorrow that would be even better.
Lab Groups
Listed below are your scientifically chosen lab groups along with a description of the fairly ordinary place you will need to locate.
Red: Lily, Bill, Emily
- The bb corner of bb and bb.
Green: Krystnell, Johanna, Spencer
- The bb corner of bb and bb.
Yellow: Mamus, Ivan, Vivian
- The bb corner of bb and bb.
Black: Eva, Gillian
- The bb corner of bb and bb.
Purple: McKayla, Ben
- The bb corner of bb and bb.
Below this line is in draft form!!!
Details
Once you have located your spot you will need to:
- Determine the latitude at that spot using at least three different tools/methods.
- Determine the longitude at that spot using at least three different tools/methods.
- Determine the elevation at that spot using at least three different tools/methods.
- Determine the minimum distance in meters from something obscure to the Prime Meridian using at least two different tools/methods.
Tools and Methods
There are a number of different ways you can determine latitude, longitude, elevation and distance:
- A well reasoned and reasonably accurate estimate.
- Measuring by angle of elevation and distance.
- Measuring by calibrated human pace.
- GPS device (I have two to loan for 1 hour time blocks on Saturday when we're in Greenwich)
- Google Earth
- Google Maps (that is with a web browser)
Each of these tools has their own strengths and weaknesses, sources of error, etc. One aspect of this lab is to learn what they are and how to best work with them. At least one person in each group will need to install Google Earth on their laptop.
Report
Each group will write-up a report in the Lab \item A description of the model to be built \item A description of the process you followed to build the model \item Any assumptions built into your model \item Calculations of the area using each of the 3 measuring devices \item The raw data, that is 9 measurements (3 values for each of the 3 devices) and the arithmetic mean and standard deviation for each set \item A discussion of the sources of error, both in-general and device/method specific \item The relative and absolute error values for each device/method XXX check this \end{enumerate}
Neatness and organization count, heavily. You can produce the write-up using a word processor, \LaTeX, or a wiki page.
Questions
Once you folks begin working on the lab I will be available to answer questions, loan tools, make smart remarks, etc. You can find me at roughly 51.4816 -0.0099, probably drinking coffee.
