How Schools Get Involved

Down by the River, Burnsville, NC

Designed by Kaleb McCurry and Josie Honeycutt, painted by Matthew Mimms, Kathy Rose, Fayma Childs, Ken Hoke, Carole Pearson, Martia Barnwell, Anne Barker, Margot Parker, Jane Hutchins, Lea Mahoney, Paw Lawing, Miriam Savard, Katie Webster, Jane Greene and Barbara Webster, and installed by Jeff Phillips and Wade Whitson.

The 2009-10 eighth grade class of Cane River Middle School created the quilt square, Down by the River. It is the perfect example of cross curricula teaching, as it is the culmination of six months of geography, history, mathematics, and art. The school’s initials in Cane River’s red and black colors are hidden in the center of the design. The surrounding mountains reflected in the river are represented in shades of gray. The schools Indian heritage is represented by the red and black chevron feather. The square is hung on the front of the school gymnasium facing the highway.

Cane River Middle School has a long history going back to 1958 when Yancey County School System built it as a county high school on ground that hundreds of years ago was the location of a Native American village. The people who occupied the village over several centuries were ancestors of the present-day Cherokee Indians.

A portion of the site was excavated in early 1992 when work to install a new drain field for the septic system beneath the football field uncovered human remains and artifacts. Work was stopped while an emergency archeological dig took place to document the village. Archeologists from the state Dept. of Archives and History and from universities, along with archaeology students, and many local volunteers spent weeks working from dawn until dark to document Yancey County’s first residents. A sampling of artifacts from the site can be seen at the Rush Wray Museum of Yancey County HIstory.

The school is nestled in a valley near the Cane river for which it is named. In 1976, the county merged its two high schools, Cane River and East Yancey, into Mountain Heritage High School. Cane River, along with East Yancey, became award-winning middle schools.

Students were excited about the idea of participating in the quilt square project, and the administration and parents leant their enthusiastic support.

Kelly Boone, eighth grade social studies teacher, was awarded a grant from the Yancey County Schools Foundation to obtain the square. She has taught at Cane River for the last nine years and lived in Yancey County for seventeen. Boone said that she wanted “to provide students with an opportunity to not only learn about their community but to also create a visual reflection of [the school’s] students, community, and heritage.” After a series of lessons on local history, a lecture about the project itself by Barbara Webster, and a Quilt Trail scavenger hunt, ninety per cent of the eighth graders submitted designs. The winning design incorporated the ideas of Kaleb McCurry and Josie Honeycutt; it was titled by Sarah Presnell.

Cane River Middle School and Kelly Boone have added one more example of excellence to the legacy of the school.

Down by the River quilt block, Burnsville, NC

How the Sundial Project began

I couldn’t help but notice the fantastically colorful quilt squares that were appearing on buildings all over Yancey County (North Carolina). My first thought about them was the realization of how much they enhanced the scenic beauty of this area. But I soon noticed that some of them had radial patterns on them that almost looked like sundials! At that moment I realized that a quilt square could be made that was also a functioning sundial! Most sundials are a combination of art and science, and it seemed to me that the art of those quilt squares could be a perfect match for the science of the vertical sundial.

So I called Barbara Webster, director of the Quilt Square Project, and told her of my idea. She was very interested, and I soon had a meeting with Barbara and her husband Martin to discuss the possibilities. That first meeting was many months ago, but since then our quilt square sundial project has grown and evolved far beyond anything we imagined at that first meeting. From then until now has been a long, interesting, and sometimes difficult adventure, involving lots of fantastic ideas and lots of wonderful people.

As a sundial maker and sundial enthusiast I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to help create a large public sundial such as this. It is my most sincere hope that this great timepiece will be enjoyed by all, and that it will serve as a landmark and point of pride for Burnsville, Yancey County, and western North Carolina for many years to come.

For those interested in learning more about sundials, the website of the North American Sundial Society (www.sundials.org) is a great place to start.

Bob Hampton
March, 2010
www.thunderstruckobservatory.com

The Burnsville Sundial, North Carolina

QUILT SQUARE GNOMONICS

The Burnsville Sundial

 

When this quilt square is sunlit it can tell you the time!

Location: N. Main St. on the side of the Yancey Common Times Journal building. Designed by Bob Hampton and Martin Webster. Painted by Martin and Barbara Webster, Cynthia and Hunter Hampton

by Bob Hampton

The science of making sundials is known as gnomonics, because the part of the sundial that casts the shadow is called the gnomon.  “Gnomon” (pronounced “no-mon”) is an ancient Greek word that means “indicator” or “that which reveals.” Some have called the gnomon the gnome that knows the time!  In the case of our Quilt Square sundial the gnomon is the steel rod sticking out from the dial face.

In order for the gnomon to cast the proper shadow it must be aligned parallel to the Earth’s rotational axis. In other words, the top end of the gnomon must point toward the north celestial pole, very close to Polaris, “the north star.” This means that the gnomon is aligned with true north and south, and also that the upward tilt of the gnomon from horizontal is equal to the latitude of the sundial’s location.

This particular type of sundial is known as a “vertical south declining” sundial—meaning that the dial face is vertical and faces generally south but not exactly south. The exact direction the sundial faces (which in this case is the same direction the wall faces) is a critical factor in the design of any vertical sundial, and is known as the declination of the dial. To measure this angle I designed and built a special purpose sundial called a “declinometer”, which indicates the angle of the wall by comparing it with the azimuth of the Sun. In this way I determined that the south wall of the Yancey Common Times Journal building faces 2.9 degrees west of south, or 182.9 degrees azimuth.

In order for this type of sundial to function properly and accurately it must be specifically designed for the location where it will be used, taking into account both the latitude and the longitude of that particular location. As mentioned above, the tilt of the gnomon depends on the latitude, but the positions of the time markings on the dial’s face are determined by both the latitude and the longitude. (Note: This is why mass produced sundials are unlikely to function properly—because the tilt of the gnomon and the layout of the hour markings aren’t right for the specific place where the sundial is being used.) For this sundial I determined the latitude and longitude of the Yancey Common Times Journal building using Google Earth, and then verified the result using standard topographical maps. The location of the sundial is latitude 35.918° N.; longitude 82.299° W.

Based on those latitude, longitude, and declination values I then found the hour and half hour line angles for the dial face, and also the angles and dimensions of the gnomon. The mathematics used for this is High School level trigonometry, and can be done on a pocket calculator. To verify my numbers I checked them against several sundial generating computer programs. The end result of these calculations is a projection onto the face of the sundial of the plane of the Sun’s apparent motion across the sky.  The nature of this projection can be seen on the sundial in the way the hour lines are slightly closer together at midday and more spread out in the morning and evening.

Using the angles and dimensions calculated above I then built a scale model of our quilt square sundial, a small test dial to check that the sundial would really work as designed. When I temporarily placed it on the wall at the Yancey Common Times Journal building and checked it against my “atomic” clock, I was very happy to see that it was indicating the correct solar time, within one minute of the time I expected to see!

Once I was satisfied with the accuracy of my hour angles I passed them along to Martin Webster, along with the data for the Equation of Time graph and star map, to use as the basis for his design of the quilt pattern on the sundial.

The steel frame behind the sundial is there to move the sundial out of the shadow of the roof overhang, and was built for us by Altec Industries in Burnsville. The gnomon was built to my design by Brisco Machining in Swanannoa.