Find true north with a stick and the sun
“It feels like a party trick that can't possibly work. It works, and you'll check it against your phone to be sure.”
The Recipe
- Around the middle of the day, stand a straight stick upright in open ground where its shadow falls clean: a park, a gravel yard, a quiet square.
- Mark the tip of the shadow every few minutes and watch it shorten, until it stops shortening and starts to grow again; that shortest shadow points due north, or south below the equator.
- Stand on the line and check it against the map on your phone, and see how close a stick and the time of day got you.
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