Hi all, I think these two sundials (Harlem and McDonald) are funny and interesting. I would like to have these fotos in better resoultion. Is there anybody who can help?
Helmut Sonderegger ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank King" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Roger Bailey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "LISTA INGLESE" <sundial@rrz.uni-koeln.de> Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 10:06 AM Subject: Re: McDonald's billboard (A sundial?) > Good thinking Roger... > > > Of course it is a sundial, a very clever one. It does not > > show regular hours but the original "stomach time". The > > design is similar to Mass dials... > > It does indeed share many of the properties of Mass dials > but it is a good deal more colourful! The implicit > hyperbola is upside down for the summer months but let's > overlook that detail! For example, at 6a.m. the shadow of > the nodus would be on the road a couple of blocks away! > > This nodus is the major novelty and I invite an enterprising > diallist to exploit it. The double-arch M offers all kinds > of possibilities... > > With a little mathematics and careful design one can arrange > that the outer limbs of the M serve as error bars. > > The central limb indicates a specific time and the outer limbs > bracket a range of times. I would fix it that there was a > 68% chance of the local mean time falling within the indicated > range. This corresponds to a well-known property of the > normal distribution that there is a 68% chance of being within > one standard deviation of the mean. > > It would be better to have the nodus parallel to the plane of > the dial (rather than horizontal) to keep the shape of the shadow > (almost) constant. > > We should be grateful to the McDonald's Ad Agency for pointing > the way to some potentially useful theory! The only snag is that > anyone who exploits this idea may fall foul of some U.S. patenting > law! > > Frank King > Cambridge, U.K. > > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
