Scenario:
You're lost during daylight hours in the Northern Hemisphere.
It is standard time (not daylight saving).
You have an analog watch.
What do you do to find your direction?
My husband talks about an old trick to find direction using a watch.
You will need to adjust if your watch is set to Daylight Savings Time.
Hold your watch horizontally
Point the hour hand at the sun
The point exactly halfway between the hour hand and the 12 on your watch is South.
The opposite direction is North.
Remember that the sun rises in the East
(the sun will be in the East before Noon)
and sets in the West
(the sun will be in the West after Noon).
The sun is Due South at noon.
The same holds true for the Southern Hemisphere
Except- point the 12 at the sun and North will be halfway between 12 and the hour hand.
Just another reason to have analog watch.
Although, you could mark the face of our digital watch to match an analog face.
The proceed with the directions above.
This first link also has details for finding direction using the sun and a stick
or using the North Star at night.
It's pretty good information to remember.
2 comments:
Well that is cool! I am going to file this info away until summer when we are hiking. Thanks!
So it's basically straight across from the hour hand minus a few degrees? Interesting. Reminds me of the coffee bubbles trick of predicting rain. If you pour a cup of coffee and the little bubbles move to the outside edge of the cup, the weather will be clear for the next 12 hours at least. If they move to the center, it will rain in the next 12 hours. It has to do with air pressure.
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