Re: Sundial inside a room, but room is inside a canyon!

[Tom Egan]

Hi John, Interestingly, the notion of a skylight is what got me going on this perhaps quixotic quest.� My house is two stories high.� The room where I want the indoor sundial is on the first floor, so I'd have to demolish most of the room above.� My neighbor wouldn't mind this particular demolition, of course, but the grandkids who were used to sleeping there would, no doubt, protest.� This led me to consider an offshoot of the skylight concept.� Some of my neighbors have installed a "solar tube" which provides a skylight effect in a remote room by reflecting the sunlight down the shiny inner wall of a tube roughly one foot in diameter.� The light emerges at the lower end of the tube.� It emerges quite brightly, I might add. I originally hoped I could install such a tube, mount a sundial beneath the lower end and watch the time go by from the comfort of my family room.� I don't think it's that simple, though.� If the sun's instant by instant azimuth and elevation in the sky is "information," then that information must get completely garbled up and lost as the rays bounce their way down the pipe. Fiber optics is certainly a way of preserving and transmitting the information for use at a remote location.� But is there another way?� Could the incoming light be polarized -- maybe in four sectors for N, E, W, S information -- to preserve the azimuth and elevation in its travels down the tube? Could some esoteric principles of radar be invoked to usefully tap into the information at various points along the tube, or at the end?� (All I know about radar is that the microwave energy bounces around in hollow waveguides and the practitioners of the black art are able to somehow work magic with it.) Tom John Carmichael wrote: Hi Tom: � Is a skylight hole in your roof possible?� This would eliminate most of your problems with mirrors.� You don't need a flat roof.� A skylight hole could be used for any of the interior dials I mentioned. � � John L. Carmichael Jr. 925 E. Foothills Dr. Tucson Arizona, USA Tel: 520-696-1709 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sundial Sculptures Website: http://www.sundialsculptures.com Stained Glass Sundials Website: http://advanceassociates.com/Sundials/Stained_Glass -