Jaipur is the home of the worlds largest sundial. Jantar Mantar is an observatory that was built 1728 by Jai Singh. Along with this his huge sundial, the park has large instruments to track the progression of the sun through the zodiac signs, the positions of the sun, and the angle of the sun. It turns out that the time in Jaipur, calculated by these sundials, was 32 minutes slower that the standard time in India. The sun was shining while we were here, a mixed blessing because the temperature spiked, but we could get good measurements from the clear shadows. Can we take the freshmen here on a field trip? I'll volunteer to chaperone.
That rules! Yeah, making sundials is tough in modern times because we keep tweaking the time a bit each year. Even Pomfret's Longitude Sundial, which corrects between local and solar time, has started to go off by a minute or two.
ReplyDeleteI hope Brian took a lot of pics here, they could be awesome for my class!
Well, I do not know about "a lot"....have we mentioned that it is hot???
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