Thread: Sundial question

Hello everyone,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but I was wondering what happens to a sundial when the clocks go back? I am an Interactive Design student looking for an answer. If anyone can help me out/point me into the right way, that would be greatly appreciated

Thank you very much

In the good old days when sundials were the principal way of telling the time, rather than being just patio decorations, Daylight Saving Time was unknown. "The time" meant just the local solar time.

Nowadays, you can try rotating your sundial to adjust it, unless of course it is too heavy or cemented to the ground.

Or replace the numbers cut in stone with small LCD displays that will show the correct hour for every notch, switching it from, say, "5" to "4" when the time is changed. I wonder if anyone is making the equivalent of 7-segment digits for Roman numerals.

Originally Posted by Leszek Luchowski

Nowadays, you can try rotating your sundial to adjust it, unless of course it is too heavy or cemented to the ground.

Actually, if the angle of the sundial's gnomon is set for a different latitude then rotation isn't enough. Sundials bought for garden ornament in Canada may be found calibrated to work perfectly outside the factory in Southern China.

True enough. Though it's pretty easy to compensate by adjusting the angle of the base by the difference in latitude.