Activities
Make a sundial
Can you guess what this item is used for? Quickly, you don’t have much time (hint hint)!
This is a universal sundial, a device to help people tell the time on anywhere in the world.
Sundials were one of the earliest technologies invented for telling the time, and they work by measuring the position of the sun and recording where a shadow falls at each hour of the day.
Build a sundial in your backyard
- Collect a stick and a few stones from your backyard.
- Find a spot that will be sunny all day and plant the stick so that it pokes up out of the ground. (Fun fact: this stick is called the ‘gnomon’!)
- Watch where the shadow of the stick falls every hour and mark the time with a stone.
- Go back the next day and check if your sundial still works.
- Keep checking the sundial to see if you can use it to tell the time!
