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MUMBLINGS February 2, 2006
History, customs and 1.2 billion people make India a very interesting
country.
Many Indians are highly competent in mathematics, science and
technology. One of the most interesting and informative things
we saw that illustrates the above description of India is the
huge sundial, which keeps accurate time to within 20 seconds.
It is located in the Astronomical Observatory
of Jaipur, a city of over 3 million people.
The astrological garden that we observed dates
back to the eighteenth century. The Discovery Channel has deemed
it as one of the 20 most interesting scientific sights in the
world. It is believed the original sundial was produced by the
Mynas in Mexico in the ninth century. The huge sundial is divided
into hours. The rest of the scale is in the five bands at the
bottom. The hour is divided into intervals of one half hour, one
quarter hour, five minutes, and one minute and lastly each minute
is divided into thirds. Therefore, the accuracy is 1/3 of a minute
or 20 seconds. It is built on the latitude of 27º, which
is the equivalent to the latitude of Jaipur. It is graduated to
the scale to find the declination angle of the sun. It is built
of sandstone and marble. The sidewalls are the ones that have
the inclination. As shown in the adjoining picture, you have to
climb several steps to be able to observe all sides of the dial.
The day we were there the sun was bright and
the time was obviously very accurate. It was hot and coming into
the park people were trying to sell sun hats to protect from the
hot sun. I was not smart enough to buy one because they wanted
$7.00 each for what looked like a $1.00 hat. As a result I got
real sunburned.
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