Since sept 2000, thousands pupils in intermediate course have measured the Earth's circumference from their classroom, simply by observing the shadow of a vertical stick at noon local solar time. Again this year, schools of many countries will join together to reproduce the observations of the Greek scientist who, more than 2000 years ago, was the first to propose a simple method to measure our planet's size.
Following in his wake, the pupils will learn how to observe the shadows and the motion of the Sun in the sky and they will build their own measuring instruments. Thus, by measuring the shadow of a vertical stick at noon local solar time and by exchanging their results with other schools through Internet, they will be able to compute the Earth's size in their turn.
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