![]() ![]() While these are all interesting methods of timekeeping, the original method of tracking the sun is often forgotten. We’re always a fan of an interesting or unique clock build around here, which often use intricate pieces of technology to keep time such as weights and gears, crystal oscillators, or even a global network of satellites in the case of GPS. These are not good reasons.Ĭontinue reading “High Noon For Daylight Savings Time” → Posted in Interest, Original Art, Rants Tagged daylight saving time, economics, policy, Rant, sundial Heck, even the name of the bill proposes to protect sunshine itself, rather than just move the hands of the clock around. My personal bet is that many folks are confounding summertime with Summer Time. If culture and physics point to Standard Time, why would you want Daylight Saving to be the new normal? When people think of Daylight Saving, they naturally think of those nice long summer days that stretch out into the night. Midnight, when the clock strikes one, just doesn’t send the same shiver down my spine. As soon as “one noon” replaces “twelve noon”, I’ll get on board. How will we explain time to future children? I’ll accept Daylight Saving time when we start reprinting analog watches with 1 o’clock at the top and start referring to 12 AM as the one that’s just before the sun reaches its peak. If we change the definition of noon permanently, we’ve decoupled time from the sun. That’s not only why we eat lunch when we do, it’s the origin of man’s time-telling itself. But even before clocks, the sun’s halfway point along its daily journey marked the halfway point of the day. High Noon, when the hour hand on the clock points straight up, represents the sun itself. There’s also the fundamental logic behind our measurement of time that’s stood for centuries, and is embedded in most of our cultural references to time. “ France-002886 – Sundial” by archer10 (Dennis) CC BY-SA 2.0. Add another hour of darkness on top, and you know why the two previous attempts to run all-year Daylight Saving were short-lived. Basically, it’s already tough enough to get up on a cold January morning when the sun is not due to rise for another hour or two. If we’re going to settle on one standard time, do we pick Standard time or Daylight Saving time? Admittedly, this is a totally unfair way to pose the question, but there are a number of good reasons to prefer all-year Standard time. So maybe it makes sense to stop changing times. People who’ve slept one extra hour don’t seem to suffer as much as people who’ve lost one. When researchers look into the data, it’s the “springing forward” that causes trouble. These are known to cause sleep disturbances and this leads not just to sleepy heads on Monday morning, but to an increased risk of heart attack and accidents in general. Let’s do a quick overview of the good idea here - doing away with time changes. It’s particularly funny timing, coming right around the Vernal Equinox, when the sun stands at its highest right at Noon Standard Time, to be debating calling this time “one PM” forevermore. While I can get behind the latter half of this motion, redefining Daylight Saving time as Standard time is, in my opinion, nonsense. The US Senate has approved the “Sunshine Protection Act”, a bill to make Daylight Saving time the default time and do away with the annual time changes. We’ve seen some creative sundial designs before, too, and if you’ve been creating your own fancy timepieces, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tipsline! Posted in clock hacks Tagged clock, sundial However, the next time your friends ask you what time it is, and you whip out a compass to line up your sundial, they’re sure to be impressed. It’s not a quick way to tell the time, by any means. The resulting piece is a handsome bit of brass with a lovely gnomon standing tall to cast a shadow on the dial. This allows the sundial to be as accurate as possible. describes the general techniques while also building a sundial of his very own. This includes methods for aligning the sundial to True North or True South with an offset compared to Magnetic North or Magnetic South. He also explains how to use simple tools to generate a sundial design that’s ideally suited to your geographical location. explains how to do this with a variety of CNC, painting, or etching methods. The first step is to create a face for the watch marked out for sundial use. The key is to replace the clockwork internals and face of the pocket watch with a sundial instead. has just the project to convert your broken or disused pocket watches to the solar way of telling the time. Sundials on the other hand need only the light from our One True Sun. They either need regular rewinding, or they need batteries. Pocket watches are all well and good, but they have some caveats.
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