Occasionally, you will find musing here on the law, science, education, technology, design, and life. Also, I build things: furniture, software, reasoned arguments... To learn more about that, click a persona below for my eponymous website.

Positional Astronomy

How to Navigate by the Sun

by David Colarusso - August 13th, 2008

For those of you interested in such things, “Yes” I will be finishing the relativity series. It’s just that the animation will take a little time, and I’ve had other priorities. Until then, however, enjoy this latest Explainer.

Now you can find out where you are even if you don’t have GPS. Learn how to find south along with your latitude and longitude using only a few household items. I should note, that in using the home-made quadrant cited, the precision of your findings will be rather low. Don’t worry, you’ll be within a few hundred miles. ;)

Transcript: (more…)

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How to Build a Paper Quadrant

by David Colarusso - April 3rd, 2007

The quadrant is a simple tool for measuring the altitude (angle) of an object above the horizon. This episode makes use of a printable template found at: http://www.davidcolarusso.com/handouts/quadrant.pdf