At 07:15 PM 12/28/99 -0200, you wrote: > > >If you were to build five sundials on the top and four faces of >a parallelepiped; if you could chose the "wall" declinations, >then -- in your opinion -- what is the angle that creates >the most pleasing visual effect. > >Parallelepiped will be placed in the coordenates 19 S 45 W. >Dimensions: about 2 m high, 90 cm each face. > >- fernando > Hi Fernando,
I would take a box and a ruler and do some experiments to see which looked best. Fix the ruler pointing south at an angle equal to your horizon. Put the box beside it and visualize a gnomon parallel to the ruler on each surface. Turn and incline the box to see different orientations. Choose the one that looks best. Normally the faces are oriented to the cardinal directions. The gnomon is then in the in the vertical plane on the north and south and parallel to the face on the east and west. On the NASS tour we saw the pillar dial by Albert Waugh at the University of Connecticut. He oriented the faces off the cardinal axes so the gnomon was at a unique angle on each face. The aesthetics were defiantly better. Fer de Vries showed a dodecahedron dial design on his web site. Each face had a unique dial. His gnomon were pegs, normal to each of the plane so both hour lines and declination lines were plotted. Very impressive. His program permits easy calculation for any inclining, reclining declining plane. By the way, I use the new clipboard feature on the Windows version to bring the design drawings into Word or Excel to finish with text. This works better for me that dxf files imported into the cheapo CAD program I've try to use. Roger Bailey N 51 W 115
