SunClocks North America
Use a person’s own shadow to tell the correct time

SunClocks make for a fun and educational DIY project that can involve children as well as adults and can also be very useful in encouraging community involvement in your project.

• Schools: SunClocks are very often used as educational projects, with wide-ranging tie-ins to the curriculum, that make for an excellent addition to any school environment.
  • The students can decorate the SunClock as they like, and there are enough component parts so that the students can usually each decorate their own.
  • Children involved in the project also often get a special sense of accomplishment, ownership and pride in the SunClock.
• Eagle Scouts: SunClocks can also be used by Eagle Scouts for projects tied to the local community.
• Professional Installations : Architects and Landscapers will often decide to include one of their SunClocks within their own projects as an interesting and unique theft and vandalism resistant ‘conversation-piece’ for public areas or private estates.
• Public Areas: Parks, nature reserves, community centers or museums can add a SunClock as an attractive interactive feature that will delight adults and children alike.
• Financing / Fundraising: Despite it’s affordability, financing can sometimes still be a problem for certain organizations such as schools or Eagle Scouts.
   
  However, SunClocks can often be used to create added publicity in the community and to increase community involvement in your project, as done by a public library at Jemez Springs in New Mexico, whose 2005 SunClock layout continues to raise funds for the library.
  
  In many cases, a Time Capsule project is also very popular and can often be tied-in to a SunClock project as a fund raising tool:
  • The SunClock can often be made ‘self-funding’ by associating it with a Time Capsule project.
  • This can be very useful as a fund-raising method, or if you want to add some community involvement in your SunClock.
  • Essentially, teachers, parents, students or other members of the community would donate a small amount for the privilege of placing something into the time capsule for future students or 'historians' to find. This can be anything from newspapers or movie posters to political advertisements, family photos, personal items or just basic name or address details, etc.
  • Schools can easily expand on this by asking students to write short predictions of future life to put in the time-capsule (tie-in with English & History), and using the SunClock as a focal point for this project based on a 'time' theme (tie-in with Science and Math).
  • It could therefore benefit school funds while also brightening-up the playground!
  • Such a time-capsule project also provides the perfect excuse for a future school reunion, with former students getting together to see their time capsule being re-opened - possibly including prizes for the most accurate prediction.