My oldest grandson (John-Winston) needed a college project for showing the altitude of the Sun, via the shadow. I made a simple solar device in my back yard, and John-Winston fabricated a similar one in his yard at Myrtle Beach. We compared views fairly often, and discussed our results.

We (Sophie, Debbie and myself) made the following photos today at 12:00 noon (December 21st 2022) EST.

The (blue mark) represents the Sun Shadow (today) at “precisely” 12:00 Noon EST, December 21st. Note that the shadow is “almost” at the end of the scale. This shows or presents the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, which is a very long shadow.

The (green mark) at the (inch-mark #9) was made on the the first day of fall (September 22nd).

The (white mark) presents the sun shadow on the first day of summer (June 21st) and the longest day of 2022, which shows a very short shadow!

This would “also conclude” that the sun is never “perfectly” overhead for our latitude which is +35º 18′ north.

The scale on the ground is perfectly level, and facing north. The shadow post of the solar device is at 90º.

Nova Sophia (Sophie) looks on with interest…

See photos below: Note the longest shadow, the blue mark, which was made on the first day of Winter, the shortest day of the year.

During DST, the time of the measurements of the shadow should be made at 1:00 PM. During EST, the shadow measurement should be made at 12:00 Noon.

This entry was posted on December 21, 2022 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Roger's Articles. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.