NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Definition of term
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Feb 4, 11:18 -0500
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Feb 4, 11:18 -0500
Martin-Please contact your schoolmaster, you are entitled to a refund for not receiving a proper education about clocks. Kids today actually often can't read an analog clock, having grown up with digital ones. But a proper clock with hands on it is actually a model of the pre-Galilean universe, with the 'sun' rotating around us on the 'earth'. In fact if you have a 24-hour clock the rotation of the hour hand is exactly imitating the way the sun revolves around the earth. With a little imagination it works for post-Galiliean astronomy equally well. This is why a clock can be used as a compass with fairly good results. Point the hour hand at the sun, and North is halfway between the hour hand and the twelve. I don't know how kids deal with digital clocks today...I suppose they miss an entire generation of jokes about where Mickey Mouse has his hands that way, too. My "vacation watch" is digital, with LED's that just aren't to be seen unless I really, really, WANT to see them and press the little button. On purpose.