As I build out the site design and curriculum for Sensebellum it is important to pack as much first principles thinking into the objects and topics that are covered.
A sundial is an excellent object for it can verify the time of day, season, and so much more through simple interactions of light, shadow, math, and reason.
While on a recent weekend sojourn to the Salmon River in Idaho it occurred to me that giving a try at making my very first megalithic sundial would be an excellent project for the day.
My only tools were a compass and a clock. From there I found a nice piece of driftwood to be the “style” and also sourced a few choice rocks with which to make the “gnomon”, or base.
The alignment of the “style” is crucial to a good sundial. After which this was securely based I started by placing river rocks on the intersection of shadow and ground for every hour and every half-hour as told by my wrist watch.
After an afternoon and the following morning I was able to correctly position these rocks and be able to tell time! Woo!
However, the real gemstone ideas came from thinking of the design further.
For instance, it occurred to me that the real important piece of the entire contraption was the tip of the “style”. In fact, I posit this could be simply a baseball sized sphere. Forget for a second how to loft such an object into the air and imagine it in place. The sun would still cast a shadow of which time could be told. Throughout the seasons this shadow would be further or closer and you could then tell the month via the inclination of the Earth.
Even further with this idea one would not even need to know true north. Or, to even have a clock! Roll with me here…
If you had this head height baseball sized sphere, and could plot it’s shadow, you could then use some sort of basic timer to plot the points. Maybe a water bottle with a hold in it a la sand timer. Who cares how long it is as long as it is consistent. You then take the points which are closest together and this will give you a time around 1:00 PM. Then, take the derivative of the parabola made by the shadow, draw a line perpendicular to it, and you found polar north! All with shadow and reason!
This is exactly the kind of teaching I aim to touch on at Sensebellum. This is also the exact kind of sculpture I aim to have populate the grounds. Maybe something more than a tree and a few rocks but this model, as seen below, will exist as a “it all started here” type of moment.