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Digital Clock Without Electricity or Moving Parts
NerdMachine writes "Throw away those slide rules and embrace the digital age. The Digital Sundial is a 10 year old invention on display in Sundial Park (Genk, Belgium), Deutsches Museum (Munich Germany), Kölnisches Stadtmuseum (Cologne, Germany), and Martha's Vineyard, USA. You need to pivot it to adjust daylight savings time. If you can't visit one of these, Digital Sundials International can sell you one for US$12,000+, or you can buy a pocket version for under US$100 for that special nerd in your life."
Sigs cause cancer.
$12,000 USD?? That doesn't seem like a very bright idea.
RTFA. From the product info:
Sunlight is cast through two cleverly designed masks in the shape of numbers that show the current time of day
Its a cool idea.
$12,000 USD?? That doesn't seem like a very bright idea.
And if you're not bright enough it won't work when you're inside.... That's deep.
.. they have built-in calculators, can be worn on the wrist, and can run a scaled-down version of Linux.
JMD
When all else fails, feel free to panic.
as in the earth. If the earth didn't rotate, it wouldn't work. Sorry, but there must be a moving part.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sundials don't work, the one I've had in my basement hasn't changed time since I installed it.
Trolling is a art,
...will never learn to read a proper sundial.
A quick hack for this would be to remove the rest of your house.
My appreciation of Douglas Adams is far deeper than yours.
A slashdotter's arch-nemesis.
*runs from the flames*
Although the clock is set to read in 5 or 10 minute intervals, depending on the time of year it could still be up to 16 minutes fast or slow compared to your watch or clock because of the Equation of time. Our sense of time is so conditioned by our dependence on the mechanical/digital that solar time is now percieved to be "wrong".
from the companues website
That's not a digital clock in any sense of the word.
What high school did you graduate from? Obviously they weren't doing their job.
From dictionary.reference.com:
digital
1. Of, relating to, or resembling a digit, especially a finger.
2. Operated or done with the fingers: a digital switch.
3. Having digits.
4. Expressed in numerical form, especially for use by a computer.
5. Computer Science. Of or relating to a device that can read, write, or store information that is represented in numerical form. See Usage Note at virtual.
6. Using or giving a reading in digits: a digital clock.
Please see #6, and then go think about why you don't know the definitions of common words. It also seems that you can't be bothered to look them up.
Are you sure you are 'intelligent' by any sense of that word?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist...)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
I read an article in an old Scientific American about an especially simple sundial: mount a globe of the Earth outside, orienting it to be exactly parallel to the real Earth. That means pointing the north pole of the globe at the North Star, and rotating it so that your current meridian of longitude runs across the top. This will put your current location exactly at the top of the globe.
The cool thing is that sunlight will now fall on the globe in exactly the way it falls on the Earth (during the day, that is). You can see the day-night terminator and it will be the same as the terminator on the actual Earth. You can see which polar regions are getting 24 hour sunlight or night. You can tell whether it is day or night anywhere on Earth, and even estimate what time it is there.
It sounded pretty cool although I never bothered to try to set one up. You'd need some kind of waterproof globe that wouldn't fade in the sunlight. Probably there are some like this on public display somewhere.
... what kind of battery life does this so-called "Sun" have?
The clock mechanism is powered by a flywheel.
The display is powered by thermonuclear fusion.
Horrors! Have to ban sundials! That "sun" thing is so dangerous when they're working that just a few minutes exposure can give you a radiation burn.
(Bad, bad woodchip mill. Good old outback bill.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way