I have just watched some videos on wilderness survival. An otherwise excellent series showed amongst other things how to determine northerly direction by two methods:
1) By using a shadow stick (pegging out the successive peaks of the shadow thrown by a vertical stick, the line of pegs then being east-west line, the north-south line perpendicular to it) 2) By polar star The author maintained that at higher latitudes these lines will not be identical and will diverge quite appreciably, the polar star direction being more "correct". I could not work out a reason for this: the shortest shadow will surely occur with the sun at the local meridian, i.e. directly south by definition. The only thought I had was that the line will not be a straight line at higher latitudes but a curve of some sort. Perhaps the illustrious correspondents to this list can tell what I am missing (BTW I have e-mailed the author with the same question). Mike Koblic, Quesnel BC
