Curated, curiosity-encouraging views of life.
Last time on STAR MATH, we talked about most of the angles that explain how finding the angle of a star’s height can help us calculate how far North or South we are on the globe or, our Latitude. We’ll continue that today for the deeply curious, but first a handy Latitude flowchart for picking …
Geometry is interesting. I personally never took a real geometry class, skipping over it and just getting the gist through other concepts. But boy did I have to do a ton of trigonometry! Thinking beyond math, shapes are just interesting. Life is interesting. As an artist who often has to depict a variety of real …
When I first started learning about celestial navigation as a wee tot, everyone stressed how difficult it was, and how much math was involved. I’m learning now, that it’s all about the approach. We’ve already done half the work, figuring out Longitude: how far East or West we are on the globe, now we enter …
The last Star Math post talked about what longitude is, and how the Earth is theoretically divided in slices, spreading out East and West, originating from Greenwich, England. This time, we get to calculate how far East or West we are on the globe! You will need: Your current time The current time in Greenwich …
Longitude; or, How Are Clocks Seriously That Important When I look around, finding my way based on what I see, the world becomes more and more fascinating! Take the sun, for example. When it’s shining bright on my side of the Earth, the other side is in shadow. My midday is Uzbekistan’s midnight. This is …
After surveying this location over the summer, using 15th century technology, I was finally able to take the data and make the final illustrated map! For those cartographers in the crowd, I was basing my restrictions on world maps of the time, which would have little to no capacity for pinpointing the coordinates for non-land-based …
Everything is constantly in motion, even at the smallest level. The world rotates and revolves, and time marches on, whether we’re watching or not. And usually, we’re not. The best way to start paying attention to time, is by observing the sun. Please don’t stare directly into the sun, that’s an A+ Bad Idea. If …
What does time have to do with anything? I keep talking about time and speed, without actually tackling what significance they have. Time itself, and how a person experiences time is a HUGE topic that I won’t dive all the way into. It gets very philosophical. For our purposes, we’re interested more in timekeeping. How …
“That does it! Now, I’m going to take your sense of duty, your sense of proportion, and especially your sense of direction!” – Senses Taker, The Phantom Tollbooth (movie, 1970) You know, I have always understood that compasses point generally Northward, or that East is in the direction of sunrise, but… I never really knew …
Hello. If you’re new to Star Math, welcome! We’ve just been chatting about finding your way around this big, beautiful world of ours. And it’s not just about finding your way, but about feeling secure in where you are, and the journey you’re going on. Last time we explored the direction circle, or what degrees …