This comes with two interesting observations. One, the season here is still winter. We got snowed on last week although it was gone in a couple of hours. Two, is an interesting thing that one of the engineers pulled out of his hip pocket in one of the classes I took at McDonnell Douglas. Your image is of a standard sundial gnomon. He wanted it to light up the time, not provide a shade for the time. How do you suppose he did that?
Be warned: I'm going to write a special entry in Our Journey about your maddening riddles. Seriously, thanks for the comment and if you'd like to provide the answer please do. I hope spring arrives in Idaho soon. Cheers!
It's very simple really. Think of fiber optic cabling. You put light in at one end and it travels along the fiber optic lines and comes out the other end. The light doesn't leave the fiber optic line on the side. So you make some giant (relatively speaking) fiber optic lines (that are rigid) and you arrange them in a circle radiating from the center. You set them up so that they are each an hour apart. The trick part is you have to put the sundial at the appropriate declination for your locale. Then, at 7 AM say, the sun shines down on it and into the 7AM fiber optic line and comes out the end. It doesn't come out the other ones because the sun isn't shining directly on them. When the sun moves around it will.
BTW. For at least the next couple of days we'll be slightly subfreezing in the AM.
Requiescat in pace
This comes with two interesting observations. One, the season here is still winter. We got snowed on last week although it was gone in a couple of hours. Two, is an interesting thing that one of the engineers pulled out of his hip pocket in one of the classes I took at McDonnell Douglas. Your image is of a standard sundial gnomon. He wanted it to light up the time, not provide a shade for the time. How do you suppose he did that?
Be warned: I'm going to write a special entry in Our Journey about your maddening riddles. Seriously, thanks for the comment and if you'd like to provide the answer please do. I hope spring arrives in Idaho soon. Cheers!
It's very simple really. Think of fiber optic cabling. You put light in at one end and it travels along the fiber optic lines and comes out the other end. The light doesn't leave the fiber optic line on the side. So you make some giant (relatively speaking) fiber optic lines (that are rigid) and you arrange them in a circle radiating from the center. You set them up so that they are each an hour apart. The trick part is you have to put the sundial at the appropriate declination for your locale. Then, at 7 AM say, the sun shines down on it and into the 7AM fiber optic line and comes out the end. It doesn't come out the other ones because the sun isn't shining directly on them. When the sun moves around it will.
BTW. For at least the next couple of days we'll be slightly subfreezing in the AM.