How difficult to make a Sundial in Singapore?

Photo by 泽新 李 on Unsplash

Dear Readers,

Thank you for coming here!

My Son had the homework for the weekend to make a simple Sundial.

And my wife assigned me as the “Responsible”, aka the one who does the work probably (Referring to RACI matrix).

So I watched the instruction video with my son the night before. The instructions were simple and clear.

It was supposed to be a simple task.

But it turned out to be a bit more complicated, which led me to think how much “nature” we have left among the man-made concrete.

Photo by Melissa van Niekerk on Unsplash

1.Where to find a place where we get sunlight all day long and we could leave our “WIP” sundial for the day?

In the video, the instruction was to fix the sundial in a spot and leave it there all day along.

First of all, we needed to find a place where we would get sunlight all day long.

Second, we needed to be able to leave our staff there.

To find a place where we would get sunlight all day long proved to be more difficult than expected.

Indoors was immediately out.

We thought of car parks and roof top gardens. At least the ones near our place were not ideal, due to either tall buildings or trees.

We looked around and did not find any qualified spot.

The next option we could think of was the beach…

We did not feel like going to the beach and the weather was not exactly “beach” type either.

I could only imagine how easy this would be in the place where I grew up. 

Any yard or field or rooftop or small road would do perfectly. There would probably be some curious kids who would just join in the fun and cause some damage.

Anyway, we had to improvise.

I tried to explain to my son that the Sun is so far away from us that the car park, garden and our flat were essentially the same spot and the shadow we got would be essentially the same.

I had to recall a few modules I took in school but eventually he bought the argument, which made the task a bit easier.

We would just go to any place that had sunlight at the time we needed to record down the position of the shadow.

Of course, we needed to ensure the panel was always facing the same direction every time we marked the shadow. 

The campus from my phone helped. We just drew an arrow on the panel and made sure it always pointed to the North.

Well, we thought we solved the biggest problem!

Photo by Billy Huynh on Unsplash

2.Maybe the impact is more “Mental” rather than “Physical”

We thought we were set and we just needed to record down the position of the shadow at different full hours.

Quickly, the weather proved difficult.

The clouds were beautiful. I had to think a bit when was the last time I actually looked at clouds.

The clouds were thick. So the Sun was hidden most of the time.

We had to wait for the Sun to show itself to mark the shadow, which meant we could not record the position of the shadow at the exact full hour.

It could be 5–10 minutes later.

Again, we had to improvise. 

Then after 11am, we lost the Sun entirely. It even rained heavily.

After lunch, we both realized that it would be impossible to finish the sundial.

But the homework was for the weekend and it would have to be turned in on Monday.

So I made a suggestion to my son — Since you already know how it works, the rest is just repetitive work. We can just guess where the Sun would be and complete your homework.

He disagreed but I pushed him to do it anyway.

I guess I just wanted to complete it. Come on, it was just homework and he already learned what he was supposed to.

So within a minute, we did it.

I knew at noon, the shadow should be roughly due south this time of the year and I knew Singapore was using the wrong time (1pm is roughly noon).

I knew where North was (We had the arrow). So that was easy.

With the few “key points” there, the rest was just spread kind of randomly.

So we completed the homework. 

Yay!

And I went to enjoy my nap, knowing my task was done.

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

Late in the afternoon, my wife told me that we received the instruction from the teacher that due to weather conditions, the assignment was postponed by a week.

I suddenly thought to myself — Why was completion so important? Why did I have to complete it? What would my son have learned from this experience?

Shouldn’t the natural reaction be to complete as much as possible and tell the teacher on Monday that the weather did not allow it?

Shouldn’t we expect the teacher to allow more time for the homework due to the weather, the uncontrollable factors?

Or would that even matter? 

If the teacher allowed more time, we would utilize it to complete it and if not, my son learned what he was supposed to learn anyway.

I wondered whether I had been poisoned too deeply by all those motivation theories, all the “result-oriented” mindset, all the “can-do” attitude?

Maybe when we feel we have lost too much “nature” among the man-made concrete, it is more “Mental” rather than “Physical”.

Till next time!