Quote:
Originally Posted by
tomewitch 
The young eaglette listened as Kurumi gestured the 12 month plagues and told her how to use her so called alternative to the small sundial that was given to them by Professor Roslund. So that was how it worked. Could she possibly have a go? "Can I try it then?" She paced into the plagues, looking down to see where the month of December was located and moved herself there. Once she was settled, Beezus stood straightly, doing what her mother always instructs, "Shoulders even..breast out..chin up.." she mumbled, her body following after. Then, without moving her head, she searched for her shadow out on the corner of her eye. "It's a bit on the right." She told Kurumi. "That means its afternoon already right?" Right! For they already had lunch. Or was it still noon? Either way, it was not morning anymore, that meant the method was a safe one to use. Based on her shadow's distance though, she figured the time was around 12:45.
Getting off from the noon marker, Beezus picked up her own handheld sundial and walked to where the Prefect was.
So that was her explanation about the whole searching for direction thing. Frowning, she tried to figure out what she said. 'If we were in the Southern Hemisphere, we'd look for South?' she thought. "So..since Scotland is in the Northern Hemisphere then we'd need to find North, correct?" But then, it was followed by her saying that the direction wasn't that necessary. OH. "Yeap..you're right." Then she started squinting the sundial on her hand. Then an idea hit her. "Kurumi..how about I try using the sundial without considering the direction and we can compare our results to see if there's any difference?" That was a good idea right?
"
Of course," Kurumi nodded. It was a rather rough one, but a human sundial was a human sundial. Still, Kurumi didn't find all this to be very accurate. In fact, measuring by the sun alone was a rather inaccurate. While the pull on the poles and the rotation of the earth around the sun was constant, so many factors went into it all and it often times made the Gryffindor's head spin. Horizontal sundials, which were the ones Kurumi was most 'familiar' with, relied on the sun castings a shadow from its style onto a flat surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow-edge progressively aligns with different hour-lines on the plate and therefore relied on the style being aligned with the axis of the Earth's rotation. Hence, if such a sundial is to tell the correct time, the style must point towards true North and the style's angle with horizontal must equal the sundial's geographical latitude. But...not all sundials required this and...she needed to stop thinking because she was going to give herself a headache. "
Hmmm?" Beezus had just asked her something, right? The Ravenclaw had a look on her face that implied that she had anyway. "
Oh, right, yep. Your are spot on." It was probably closer to one in the afternoon now that she thought about it.
Kurumi nodded. North it was for all intensive purposes. "
Actually, that sounds like a great idea," the prefect nodded. Granted, even if you stood a few feet apart from each other the time readings were bound to be a little different, right? One's angle to the sun and all that shifting just a hair. Then again, it was also entirely possible that she was over thinking things, as usual. "
We can check the time using my pocket watch after we each get a time reading."