Sunclocks Australia

Garden Sundials   Painted Sundials   Playground Sundials

Sunclocks (Human Sundials) is a fun interactive educational learning tool for students who become actively involved using their own shadow to tell correct clock time, it teaches them about how the earth’s rotation causes night and day its revolution around the sun the reason for the changing seasons, due to the sun’s seasonal movement of + -23.°27″ North and South from the equator.

A Sunclock is a classic analemmatic Human Sundial. Instead of hour lines it has hour points which lie on an ellipse that has a date scale positioned perpendicular to the ellipse.

The student stands on the appropriate date and the direction of their shadow indicates the time. Please view attached photos.

The plans are supplied by Sunclocks Australia while the actual installation is carried by the school . A set of sample plans are available upon request showing all the relative details of measurements and size required for laying out the Sunclock.

The Sunclock Plans are calculated by using the exact latitude and longitude of the location of where the sunclock is to be installed, making it unique to that location; thus enabling it to tell the correct clock time.

The novelty value of being able to read clock time directly from a sunclock well compensates for the slight time difference that occurs on certain months of the year when the sun is nearly overhead at certain latitudes when the EOT is + / – 15″

Feed back from teachers sugges that children find Sunclocks (Human Sundials) absolutetly fascinating, because they are using their own shadow to tell the time!

Children also devise their own set of “games” based around the Sunclock layout.

Sundials are part of the Australian curriculum and some Australian schools have already taken advantage of having their very own sunclock in their playground.

Science / Year 3 / Science Understanding / Earth and space sciences

Content description
Earth’s rotation on its axis causes regular changes, including night and day

Elaborations

1. recognising the sun as a source of light
2. constructing sundials and investigating how they work
3. describing timescales for the rotation of the Earth
4. modelling the relative sizes and movement of the sun, Earth and moon

Code ACSSU048

Topics

• Earth Rotation

URL: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Elements/ACSSU048

Rees Campbell from Polytechnic in Hobart says “The whole thing has been absolutely fantastic George and I’ve attached a couple of photos of the completed sundial and it’s impeccable accuracy! Apart from the fact our big opening was on a drizzly day, the whole expereince has been brilliant for all involved! Cheers!”

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