2009/04/28

Reflection Entry 4, Summary

This past week had the biggest impact on my learning experience. I was sharing my ideas with a few people and bringing in concepts of different observations helped me to realize the points I missed. Everything suddenly started to fit in together like puzzle pieces and now I complete understand the behaviour of the moon on the night sky. It rises and sets on the more-less same position as the sun (east and west), but contrary to the sun, the moon does not have a specific part of the day when it rises or sets. I knew a week ago that the moon rises at a different time but I never realized how significant the changes were. Not only the moon changes its phases over the period of 28 days, it also completely changes rising and setting times throughout the day. The only time we can be sure about is when a full moon occurs – then the sun, the earth and the moon are all lined up. We see the sun setting on the west and the moon rising exactly on the opposite side on the east.

Also, I managed to solve the mystery about the photos. On the end, the moon does not rotate CW or CCW; it was just the relative perspective views the pictures were taken from. One was from far north (North Cape, Europe, the northernmost point of Europe) and the other one from Vermont. Obviously, a person’s top that is standing at the North Pole appears to be another person’s left if she stands at the equator.

The new thoughts I learned this week was the topic of tides. I finally understand the tidal moves (the Earth’s gravitational force) and know the time differences. Both high and low tides happen twice a day, with a circa 50min delay which is due to the difference in moon rising / setting (also 50min). Such difference is created from the relative revolution around the Earth – the moon does not copy the equator exactly but goes approximately in the 15° angle.

As a learner, I enjoyed this project a lot. It showed me that patience is the wisest method of learning because drawing conclusions too quickly requires certain amount of assumptions to be made. And they can always include misconceptions, based on our previous knowledge and pieces of information we might have heard somewhere before. I realized that I was living 19 years with a partial ignorance of the moon and I am happy I understand its behaviour into details.

Battell Beach view at night, Middlebury, VT, USA