In northern hemisphere countries such as the UK the sun moves east to west but it always tracks this path in the south.
North-Northwest, East-Northwest, etc.
In sum, north facing gets the least amount of sun and consequentially will be the dampest area. Cartography , Features , Location glossary , Weekend reads. Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit. You look on the map and see that in the north east of the national park there is a village, where you can find food and shelter. Look to the stars image credit: Two sticks, one star. Using GPS to extinguish wildfires, and the fixes we Learning to drive in an Autonomous World Read more. Why we shouldn't fear A. Geocoding, latitude, longitude and the other It can also have a margin of error of about 35 degrees, so this method is only reliable for an approximate idea of direction.
Polaris, also called the North Star, can be used in the Northern Hemisphere to help you find north. Polaris, or the North Star, is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Think of the Big Dipper like a ladle hence the name , where the handle holds a cup, and the outer edge of the cup the farthest from the handle points out into the sky and toward Polaris. For confirmation, Polaris is the last star that makes up the handle of the Little Dipper. Draw an imaginary line from Polaris to the ground. This is approximately true north.
When you face Polaris, you are facing due north; behind you is due south, and due west will be on your left, while due east will be on your right. Recognize the Southern Cross. In the Southern Hemisphere, the constellation of the Southern Cross aka Crux can be used to guide you in a southerly direction. Five stars make this constellation, and its four brightest form an angled cross.
Use the Southern Cross to find south. Find the two stars that make up the lengthwise portion of the cross and imagine a line that extends out five times greater than the full length of the cross. When you reach the terminus of that imaginary line, draw another imaginary line that extends to the ground. This is generally the direction of south. Choose a guiding landmark.
How do we Define North, South, East, and West in Space?
Gather your tools and equipment. A compass is a round instrument with all the cardinal directions printed on it. You can make your own rudimentary compass if you have a few items available. Rub the needle against the magnet. Do this at least 12 times if you are using a weak magnet like a refrigerator magnet, or about five times if you have a stronger magnet. This will magnetize the needle. Cut a one-quarter-inch disk of cork.
Then, use the pliers to push the needle through the cork disk.
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If you don't have a cork, you can place the needle on a leaf. Place the cork disk in the center of the bowl of water. The needle will be free to spin around like a compass needle, and will eventually align itself with the poles. Wait for the needle to stop spinning. If it was properly magnetized, it should tell you the north—south line.
Note that unless you have a compass or other reference, you will not know if the needle is pointing north or south, just that it's pointing to one or the other. Many websites and books say that you can magnetize a metal needle by rubbing it with wool or silk, but that will only create static electricity, not magnetism.
Find your direction with a compass. Day or night, using a compass, GPS, or cell phone equipped with either is the best and easiest way to determine directions. These devices are also the most accurate, making them the most reliable methods. A compass will give false readings around metal objects like keys, watches, and belt buckles. The same is true for magnetic objects, such as certain rocks or power lines.
Use a global positioning system. A GPS is arguably the easiest way to determine direction or find your way, because these electronic devices use satellites to position your location. A GPS can be used to tell you where you are, give you directions to a specific location, and track your movements.
- Faith on the Rocks (A Daisy Arthur Mystery).
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- Error (Forbidden);
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It should also be initialized before use, so that it orients itself knows where it is and downloads the most current and accurate maps. In Irish, for example, the directions have a similar structure, so there are different words for "in the north", "to the north", "from the north". May 27, 6: Re 1 I've toyed over the years with two theories, neither of which enthuses me.
Cardinal direction
Perhaps, somewhere in the misty past, somebody-or-other wanted to discourage associations of deosil ordering with pre-Christian religion, and 'signing the cross' calls for two perpendicular lines. Alternatively, perhaps it's a matter of the sound of the words: The phonaesthetic theory seems to me more compelling for 2. I somewhat prefer the phonasthetic theory over the religious for 1 , possibly due to a soft spot for phonaesthetics.
Not answering Bill's questions, but pointing out that in Japanese you can say it both ways. At some point Meiji period? Of course, there's also the classical Japanese cardinal directions, which were likewise informed by Chinese culture: I would speculate that the conventional ordering of the cardinal directions in English comes from thinking of them as two axes, so that it's really "North-South, East-West. That might be pure coincidence but it's not implausible to think that alphabetical-order might become conventional for such pairs when there's no other "natural" order from a conceptual perspective.
From the time I began studying Chinese language and culture, oh, so long ago, I have always felt that the underlying reason for that was because — for the denizens of the Yellow River Valley where the kings and emperors of the past were situated — the South was the direction of warmth. They oriented their thrones and their palaces to the south, whereas the north to their backs was the direction of darkness and cold.
FWIW, the google books n-gram viewer indicates that in its corpus "north to south" has consistently been more common than "south to north" and the same with "east to west" versus "west to east. May 27, 7: East-West is a natural ordering since that's the way the sun moves appears to move. As for North-South, that might also derive from the role of the Pole Star in navigation, thus making North primary.
The obvious answer is "why not? An elderly teacher of mine in Beijing once drew a map of the adjoining area with south at the top, explaining that while he realized maps now generally did the opposite, he preferred to show things "as they really were. May 27, 8: The or a partial answer to this may lie in ancient Chinese astronomy, which was rather different from Mediterranean astronomy. The latter was ecliptically oriented while Chinese astronomy was equatorial, with the center of the sky being the Forbidden Purple Enclosure — the North circumpolar stars, more or less-and then orienting [pun with malice aforethought] everything else in the sky out from that.
Nearest thing to the "zodiac" was the 28 houses, derived from the Synodic Month, So the answer to the question of order of the cardinal directions might derive from Chinese astronomy. Then of course again, the customary ordinary recitation of the directions may antedate bureaucratization of the sky in Chinese culture. As to the saying that the compass points "South", the early Han Dynasty compasses were spoon shaped devices, with the cup, or "enclosure" [possibly analogous with the circumpolar center of the sky in the Forbidden Purple Enclosure] at the North end and the stem "pointing" to the Southerly end of the magnetic alignment.
How do we Define North, South, East, and West in Space?
But which end of a compass needle points north? We call it the north pole, ie the north-seeking pole. But opposite poles attract. So the north pole of a compass needle points north, because the Earth has a south pole at its North Pole, and a north pole at its South Pole. May 27, 9: In German-speaking sinology, this principle is sometimes referred to as "Unger'sche Tonregeln" Unger's tone rules" because Ulrich Unger, the doyen of German Eary China philology in the 20th century cf. The most robust part of these rules is the placement of rising tone and entering tone syllables in compounding.
May 27, After all, ESWN is cyclic in the clockwise direction if you're standing on the ground and pointing to cardinal points on the horizon. The odd thing is that, in mahjongg seating, ESWN runs counterclockwise! My guess is that this comes from using Polaris for orientation. If you face Polaris, you always face North, but Polaris is relatively close to the horizon if you're in the Chinese latitudes , so the stars near it and down to the horizon look like they're "below" all the rest in the same field of view. Assuming you can crane your neck but don't turn your body, counterclockwise ESWN is the right way to label your view.
To put is another way, if you look at a map, the counterclockwise order of directions is ENWS. The rules of mahjongg are, from this perspective, a clue to origins of the counterclockwise! In the previous century, I purchased a compass in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the shop I couldn't tell which point of the needle pointed north or south.