Showing posts with label trigonometry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trigonometry. Show all posts

05 January 2009

Shadow lengths

From a Jeopardy! clue: to get vitamin D, walk around in the sunlight for at least twenty minutes a day -- but only when the sun is low in the sky. "Low in the sky" is defined as when your shadow is longer than you. That is, when the altitude of the sun is less than forty-five degrees.

The time of Muslim afternoon prayers are also defined in terms of simple arithmetic on shadow lengths.