A sundial is like a human soul, it only works when it's light.
Instructions
Step 1
The pillar, which was used as a clock, was called a gnomon. The sundial is a device for determining the time by the change in the length of the shadow from the gnomon and its movement along the dial. The appearance of this clock is associated with the moment when a person realized the relationship between the length and position of the sun's shadow from certain objects and the position of the sun in the sky. One of the first sundials found in the Naut burial (Ireland) dates back to 5000 BC. The obelisks of Ancient Egypt and Babylon were used to determine the time of day from the length of the shadow.
The greatest philosophers and mathematicians of Ancient Greece - Anaximander, Anaximenes, Eudoxus, Aristarchus - were engaged in the improvement of sundials. The ancient peoples did not have the division of the day into 24 equal parts. They divided the daylight hours for 12 hours, from dawn to sunset, so at different times of the year the length of the hour was different. In the ancient sundial - the scaphis - time was determined by the length of the shadow cast by the gnomon on the surface of a spherical notch marked with complex curves. With the introduction of equal hours of day and night, time began to be determined not by the length of the shadow, but by its direction.
Step 2
The simplest sundial shows solar time, that is, does not take into account the division of the Earth into time zones. You can use the sundial only during the day and in the presence of the sun. On a sunny day, any pillar casts a shadow. To find out what time it was, people measured the shadow in steps. In the morning it was longer, at noon it became very short, and in the evening it lengthened again. For many peoples, these obelisks served at the same time to worship the cult of the sun god.
A working model of a sundial is exhibited in the courtyard of the Museum of Antiquities of the Kerch Historical and Cultural Reserve. Now anyone can see how the ancient Greeks who lived on the territory of Kerch hundreds of years ago measured time. This is a working model, the original is kept in the exposition, visitors to the museum can see it. This copy of the clock was installed taking into account all local peculiarities and really counts the time on a sunny day.
Step 3
There are horizontal, vertical sundials (if the plane of the dial is vertical and directed from west to east), morning or evening (the plane is vertical, from north to south). Conical, spherical, cylindrical sundials were also built. In addition to watches made of precious and common metals, stone, wood and paper, people also looked for primitive ways of measuring time by the shadow, when the only aid for this was a human hand with five fingers.
The simplest way to measure time using the so-called sundial was that the left hand was turned with the palm up and its upward thumb played the role of a shadow hand. Depending on the length of this shadow, in comparison with the rest of the fingers of the hand, it was possible to roughly determine the time. This simple way of measuring time has persisted among the rural population for a very long time. A short twig the length of the little finger, held perpendicularly between the little finger and ring finger, was sufficient as a shadow pointer.