Mystery Class Reminder: February 22, 2002 Today's Report Includes: Presidential Data More Than Daylight Is Changing: Seeing the Light Lesson Try This! Reminder: A Grander Graph is Better This Week's Sunrise/Sunset Times Coming in the Future Reports Presidential Data Although many U.S. classrooms had the day off from school on Monday for President's Day, that didn't stop the gathering of sunrise/sunset data from the Mystery Classes around the globe. We've got the third set of sunrise/sunset times for you below from your Mystery friends. Will your graph this week tell you more about the locations of the Mystery Classes? More Than Daylight Is Changing As you plot the changing daylength on your graphs, remember that sunlight affects all living systems. The sun is at the base of the food chain. Sunlight makes plants grow, animals eat these plants, predators prey on these animals, and so forth. As daylength changes at the Mystery Classes around the planet, stop to think about how the food chain is changing too. For example, during spring in the Northern Hemisphere, sunlight and photosynthesis increase, temperatures rise, and food production increases. The animal movements you track and the signs of spring you witness will be related to daylight in one way or another. To help you discover these connections, this would be a good time to look at the Seeing the Light Lesson from page 93 of the printed Teacher's Manual, or on the Journey North Web site. This lesson will help your students see the central role that sunlight plays in living systems. Seeing the Light Lesson Try This! 1. Select one of the Journey North migratory species. 2. Find out where this animal fits in the food web. (What does this animal eat, i.e. what is its prey? What is it's prey's prey? What plants does the prey eat?, etc.) Go back through the food web until you reach the sun as the source of food energy for this system. 3. Draw a diagram of your animal's food web. 4. Next, think about ways this food web changes during the seasons. 5. Then, discuss this question: "How do seasonal changes in photoperiod affect my animal's food web?" Reminder: A Grander Graph is Better This year the vertical axis of the Mystery Class graph will need to extend from 24 hours at the top all the way down to 0 hours at the bottom (instead of 4). If you made your own graph, make sure that the vertical axis extends to 0 hours at the bottom. (The PDF and Word versions below show this full graph and can serve as the example. The current "Make Your Own Graph" instructions show how to extend the graph using an additional half sheet of graph paper.) Mystery Class Graph 2002 ( PDF or Word): PDF Word This Week's Sunrise/Sunset Times Remember, the secret Mystery sites recorded their times last Monday, the same day you collected your own local sunrise/sunset data. Journey North Mystery Class Sunrise/Sunset Data Data For: Monday, February 18, 2002 MYSTERY CLASS SUNRISE SUNSET #1 08:34 18:07 #2 00:00* 00:00* #3 06:50 18:26 #4 06:09 18:36 #5 06:43 18:27 #6 07:18 18:06 #7 06:33 17:51 #8 08:09 17:09 #9 06:21 17:59 #10 07:08 19:23 * Journey North Mystery Class #2 reported 00:00 for their times and left this message for you: "We can still wear sunglasses at night." Note: Military time is usually expressed without any punctuation. We have used a ":" between the hours and minutes for clarity.) Coming in the Future Reports Eggstraordinary Experiments: March 1 The Longitude Clues: March 15 Clues from your Mystery Friends: March 22 & 29, April 5, 12, & 19 Answers Due: April 26 The Next Mystery Class Update Will be Posted: March 1, 2002 Copyright 2002 Journey North. All Rights Reserved. Please send all questions, comments, and suggestions to our feedback form