The author of this page gratefully acknowledges that information in this lesson was borrowed and modified from the following site: http://www.kyes-world.com/quadindex.htm

Prior to setting out on your voyage across potentially hostile seas, you must be sure you are competent in using your astrolabe in navigation. With your team, your job is to "navigate" your way through the school and measure the height or altitude of certain objects using your group’s astrolabe.

This voyage is one fraught with danger. You must not disturb the sea monsters lurking behind the open or closed doors of each classroom. If you do, these sea monsters might cause you harm or distress and send a report back to the Chief Navigator … that’s Miss Manwell. The Chief Navigator will be very upset if this happens. If necessary, referrals will be written and crew members will be sent to the brig … but that won’t happen, aye, matey?

MATERIALS NEEDED:

WHAT TO DO:

Take your astrolabe and set out to find and record the altitude/height of the following objects. Use the method we previewed in class. There’s a reminder guide on the back of this ship manual. Do your job and report immediately back to the Navigator’s Academy for further instruction:

HOW IT WORKS:

Recalling some properties of triangles, we can assume that:

We can estimate that the angle of the building to the ground is 90° . We know that another angle of our triangle is 45° because we measured it with our quadrant. That means that the other corner has to be 45° also (the angle at the top of the building).

We can deduce that we have an isosceles triangle, with equal length sides from us to the building and from the bottom to the top of the building. All we need to do is measure the distance back to the building and we will know its height.