It’s About Time….To Make A Sundial!

Introduction

Have you ever watched an old movie, and when a character asks what time it is the other characters all look at the sky, instead of checking their watches, or their cell phones? There’s no giant digital clock in the sky, those characters are using the position of the Sun in the sky to tell time, as people have done for generations.

The oldest known instruments for telling time, the sundial, allow us to track the position of the sun more accurately. Up until the early 19^th century, sundials were the main instrument that people used to tell time. If they are correctly placed, sundials can be used to accurately tell time, down to the minute!

In this activity you will be making your own sundial, and using your body to track the movement of the Sun across our sky!

Background

For millennia, people have used sundials to tell the time of day, based on the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. There are many types of sundials, but in general each consists of a gnomon, a thin rod that casts a shadow onto a dial, a flat plate or platform. The apparent movement of the Sun across our sky is the result of the Earth’s rotation on its axis. As the Earth spins, the Sun appears to move across our sky – but really we’re the ones who are moving!

As the Sun’s position changes in our sky, the shadow it casts will align with lines marking each hour, indicating the time of day. The accuracy of a sundial is affected by a number of factors, including the fact that the angle of the Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly perpendicular, and the Earth isn’t perfectly round. As a result, corrections have to made to sundials to account for these changes.

For today’s activity we’ll be making a simple sundial (using a clock to help us!), as well as tracking the position of the sun by observing our shadows.

Materials

Preparation

Procedure

Observations and Results

In this activity you observed the movement and changes in shadows over the course of the day. In the case of your own shadow, the pattern you noticed depends on the time of day that you started. If you started this activity in the morning, you should have observed that your shadow started out long, and by the middle of the day it looked much shorter. If you started in the middle of the day you noticed the opposite, your shadow started off shorter, and grew longer over the course of the afternoon. However, regardless of when you started, you should have noticed that the position of your shadow changed over time. As it got later, your shadow moved in a clockwise direction from the first outline you drew (as long as you were completing this activity in the Northern-hemisphere!).

For your sundial, you should have noticed something similar. At each hour, the shadow of the straw was in a different position, each time moving clockwise from the start position. After a few hours, you should have noticed that the sundial looks like the face of a clock, with the numbers evenly spaced out around the plate.

The reason for your shadow’s change in shape and position have to do with the earth’s rotation on its axis. As the Earth spins, the Sun appears to move across our sky.  The Sun is highest in the sky at noon or midday, and at this point it casts its shortest shadow, because it is directly above us in the sky. In the morning and later in the afternoon, the Sun is off-center, and therefore casts a longer shadow.

The position of the shadow also changes as the Sun appears to move across our sky. You can see something similar if you shine a flashlight on your hand, and then move the flashlight. As you move the light, the position of your hand’s shadow will change with the movement of the flashlight. The position of the Sun in our sky is dictated by the speed of the Earth’s rotation – the Earth rotates on its axis at a speed of 460 meters/second, or approximately 1,000 miles/hour! When the Earth rotates 15 degrees on its axis, its just as though the Sun has moved 15 degrees across our sky. As a result of this movement, (and depending on where you live) the shadow cast by the sun moves approximately 30 degrees each hour, so that over the course of 12 hours, it travels a full 360 degrees around your sundial. 

More to Explore

• A Matter of Time, from Science Buddies
• Build a Water Clock to Show the Drip, Drip, Drip of Time, from Science Buddies
• Changing Constellations, from Science Buddies
• Science Activities for All Ages!, from Science Buddies

Credits