In this activity, students use sinusoids to model daylight data for two US cities (Fairbanks, AK and Miami, FL). They predict which city has more total daylight during a given year, and then use their model to calculate an answer to that question. (They may be in for a surprise!)
Calculus students have an opportunity here to practice defining and calculating definite integrals, while students in earlier courses will need to take advantage of the fact that the average value of a sinusoid is equal to its midline.