About the Mystery Class Project

Throughout spring's journey north over the next four months, all the migrations you'll follow and all the changes in plants, animals and weather you'll witness, will be effected by daylight in one way or another. See if you can discover these connections.

***Mystery Class: Changing Photoperiod During Spring***
Here's fun activity that will let you observe changes in photoperiod around the globe during spring in the northern hemisphere. (Photoperiod is the amount of daylight between sunrise and sunset each day.)

We've made contact with 11 Mystery Schools all over the world and now you have to guess where they're hiding! The only clue: As spring sweeps across the northern hemisphere day length changes everywhere on earth.

Here's what you'll do.

1. Every Monday, record the time the sun rises and sets, according to local time.
2. Calculate photoperiod by counting the number of hours and minutes the sun is up.
3. Plot the photoperiod of your home town on your graph.
4. Every Friday, students from New York's East Hills School will send you the sunrise and sunset times they've collected from our Mystery Schools. (The day length information reported on Friday will be readings taken by the Mystery Schools the previous Monday, i.e. the same day you took your reading.)
5. Calculate the photoperiod at each of these Mystery locations and add them to your graph.

   For the next 6 weeks, until the spring equinox on March 20th, this is the procedure you will follow.

6. On the spring equinox, the exact time of sunrise at each class Mystery Class location will be provided Greenwich Mean Time. We'll show you how this information can be used to figure the longitude of each Mystery School.
7. On May 1st, each Mystery Class will provide additional clues so that students can race to guess the location of each class.
8. May will be "Meet the Mystery Class Month". Each will introduce themselves on-line and you'll have a chance to correspond with them; who ever and where ever they are!?
9. We'll continue to plot photoperiod until June, as we approach the summer solstice and summer vacation!!.

   Materials You'll Need

   • 12 colored pencils or markers. (One color per Mystery Class and one color for your class.)
   • 4 sheets graph paper per student (Standard-sized, 8 1/2"x 11 3/4", quad ruled, 4 squares/inch)
   • Tape
   • An early riser or a newspaper or calendar that provides local sunrise and sunset information. (Remember, you don't necessarily have to get up and watch the sunrise! Newspapers and local calendars often contain this information.)

1. Tape 4 sheets of graph paper together so that the final graph is 23 1/2 " tall and 17" wide.
2. The bottom of your graph will denote the dates of your Monday readings. Mark 16 weeks along the bottom and allow 4 squares per week.
3. Write the following dates for your Monday readings along the bottom:

    
         Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27, 
         March 6, 13, 20, 27, 
         April 3, 10, 17, 24, 
         May 1, 8, 15, 22.
   

4. The left edge of your graph will indicate day length. Allow 3 squares for each hour and make space for 24 hours.