Organization: Current Science Tel: +44 71 323 0323 Fax: +44 71 580 1938
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Sat, 3 Oct 1992 21:16:16 BST
From:         Graham Toal <gtoal@CURSCI.CO.UK>
Subject:      Sunrise, sunset...
Comments: To: Words-L and the Bandwidth Hogs <words-l@uga.cc.uga.edu>

Well, since some people questioned my observation that the sun travels
in a different direction <down under>, and no-one can remember the
last time I explained this a year ago when, I think, it came up incidentally
along with the old bathwater gag, here goes...

If you live on the equator, the sun rises in the east, goes directly
overhead, and sets in the west.  If you stand facing the sun when it
rises, and follow it with your eyes all day, by evening you will have
a crick in your neck and you'll be bent over backwards, looking behind
you.

If you live in the Northern hemisphere, when you look at the sun in
the morning it is southeast of you, it travels in an arc staying
south of you, and disappears in the southwest.  If you looked at
it when it first rose, and followed it all day, your head will have
turned from left to right.

However, in the deep south, eg New Zealand, where I observered this
phenomenon for the first time, you look at the sun in the morning
to the *North*east of you, it floats across the sky east to west,
and settles in the northwest.  Your day was spent tracking this
magnificent glowing orb from right to left.

Normally you don't consciously think of the sun having a left/right
or right/left bias, because you trot out the old saying "rises in
the east and sets in the west", but when you actually perceive it
for a few weeks you begin to realise something is wrong.  And it's
the sun always being to one side of you that most people use (I think)
as their innate sense of north-southness.  At the bottom of the
world that's thrown off completely.

Here's a diagram if it helps...
                                        eye
                                right  /   \ left
                                      /     \
                                     /       \
                                    /         \
                                   /           \
                                  /  <-------   \
                                 /               \
                                /                 \
                               /                   \
                              /                     \
                             /                       \
                            /                         \
                            *_________________________*  <-- equator
                          W  **                     **  E
                               *****           *****   /direction of sun
                                    ****   ****     |/
                                        ***          ~~


                                                   __
                                        ***       |\
                                    ****   ****      \ direction of sun
                               *****           *****
                          W  **                     **  E
                            *_________________________*  <-- equator
                            \                         /      viewed from
                             \                       /       South
                              \                     /
                               \                   /
                                \                 /
                                 \               /
                                  \             /
                                   \   ---->   /
                                    \         /
                                     \       /
                                      \     /
                                 left  \   / right
                                        eye

So bayla was wrong :)

G
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