Talk:Sundial
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Interference by reindeer
[edit]@ClemRutter: do you have an RS for sundials being unusable because of herds of reindeer? You'd only have to wait for the obscuring reindeer to move, as they do, to be able to read the time. Contrast the situation with a nearby pride of lions, where you would not safely be able to stay around long enough to get a reliable reading of the time.
Greenwich
[edit]I know that there are already enough pictures so I won't add this one, but in case anyone wanted a picture of the Greenwich (England) sundial, it is here:
Sundial
[edit]Is a horological divise that tells the time of day when the direct position of the sun in the sky — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.188.243.152 (talk) 16:37, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Short description
[edit]@Edmund Patrick re: this edit and your revert: See Wikipedia:Short description, in particular:
- "A short description is not intended as a definition".
- "Short descriptions exceeding 40 characters may be truncated in some contexts."
- "When used in searches, they are scanned quickly and in this case a longer and more detailed description can be less useful."
The existing short description, at 80 characters, is far too long. The point of a short description is to "complement and clarify the page title" not to define the article's subject. In this case for instance "Sundial" might be parsed as an adjective ending in "–ial" rather than the compound "sun-dial". My proposed short description adequately disambiguates the title while remaining short enough to avoid truncation. rblv (talk) 18:53, 21 February 2026 (UTC)
- @Rublov well that was a long read but useful, thanks. Edmund Patrick – confer 08:04, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Earth's rotation
[edit]The article currently states "the Earth rotates 360° in 24 hours". This is incorrect - the Earth itself takes 23 hours, 56 minutes to rotate 360°. The article wording needs to be corrected to make it clear that 24 hours is the period for the Sun to return to the same position in the sky, not the period that the Earth takes to rotate on its axis. Tevildo (talk) 07:51, 19 June 2026 (UTC)