Dear Brent, You note:
> The people who live in the tropics have > another special event, when the sun is > directly over their latitude. This is not quite true unless you go to an enormous amount of trouble. If you live in the tropics, what normally happens is that the sun crosses to the south of where you live one day and crosses to the north the next. Or, of course, the other way round. To experience the sun directly overhead requires careful planning. You have to match your latitude to the declination of the sun AND be at the right spot at the moment of solar transit. I have tried this a number of times and the best I have managed is a solar altitude of 89 deg. 59' 59.8". Since the diameter of the sun is about half a degree you don't have to be as close as that to have at least part of the sun directly overhead. David Patte comments: > they sure don't get much of a shadow at > noon on that day :) NO, NO, NO!!! Just go and try it. The shadows are much more interesting than you would expect... Normally, your shadow extends outwards from your feet and if you turn round your shadow doesn't turn with you. When the sun is directly overhead, your shadow DOES turn with you. If you hold your arms out and do a gentle pirouette then the shadow does a nice pirouette too. If you lean your head forward and squint down your nose, you can see the shadow of your nose on the ground and this turns round with you too. The shadow isn't like you are used to though. When you are walking along you see this strange two-dimensional creature round your feet and you can't stop treading on it. You feel kind of cruel :-) I have walked along a crowed street in Kuala Lumpur with the sun at 89 deg 35' studying the feet of other pedestrians. Everyone had this curious two-dimensional companion and I was the only person who realised just what fun this was! There are two down-sides to all this fun: First, it will probably be very hot! [Readers may ponder why :-)] Secondly, if you should look up, you see this fiery object directly overhead and this has a strange psychological effect. You wonder what stops it falling on your head. Have fun in the sun! Frank H. King Cambridge, UK --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
