Lat-long on a flat surface!
12–13 September 2013.
Class 7 kids of Shriram Matriculation School (SMS) gather to learn about latitudes and longitudes, grids, and how to give the location of places using coordinates.
Each student was given a sheet of blank A4 paper. On it, they marked four random points. (It was tough to get them to be messy about it! Neatness and order is demanded of children so often, that they are hesitant to ‘mess up.’)
Each point was designated with a letter: A, B, C, or D.
Then, they eye-balled the centre of the sheet and put one more point, E.
Then they were given a scenario. Each of those points is a well. They are all dry, except one — say, C. There is a person who has a team of workers and necessary equipment with which the water from C can be pumped and distributed to people in the area. Except … the team needs a way of knowing exactly where C is.
Asked to tell the team where C is without pointing to it or saying, “It’s on the paper”, the kids soon realized how tough it is to give exact locations. Common answers included: “It is on the top of the page”, “It is to the left of A”, and so on.
When other kids were asked to verify these locations, their answers were different … “top” for one was “bottom” for another, “left” became “right” to another, etc.
So, we folded the paper in half, horizontally. Drew a line. Then tried to locate C.
No dice.
Fold again, draw more parallel lines. Yet again. The middle line was marked 0˚ (equator). Every subsequent line at 10˚ intervals, north and south.
Still not good enough.
Then we repeated this process by folding the paper vertically. Longitudes were marked from 0˚ (prime meridian) and on either side at 10˚ intervals, east and west.
And a few examples and shouting and jumping up and down vying to be the first one later, everyone was able to give the latitude and longitude of not just C but of all the other wells, too.
This quickly became a game and they wanted more! More than happy to oblige them, of course.
Coordinates given, they had to locate the points on the grid on the whiteboard. Points were given and they had to give the latitude and longitude for them.
Then a simple act of showing how the flat sheet can be wrapped around a sphere, and what happens to the latitudes and longitudes when this is done, brought home the idea of a grid on Earth.
We were done.
But they had to be told to please leave and go home, enough for one day!
When kids’ imagination is fired up and the excitement is kindled, there is no ‘boring subject.’
(Photo credits: Sri Anand, teacher, SMS)
