How to read a sundial

At a given stage in human or pre-human evolution, the creation of elaborate tools allowed for your ancestors to accelerate their effective separation from other apes. Hominid brains became sophisticated enough to appreciate the temporal relationship between physical inevitabilities in their environment and biological realities they needed to be cognizant of, such as the fact that it is easier to sleep "at night"(that is, in darkness) but also the fact that certain dangerous predators go on the prowl when it's dark.

What is a sundial?

Formally, it is a chronometer (i.e., a timepiece) that uses the shade produced by sunlight falling on a vertical rod to show local time. For reasons you'll see shortly, the rod, called a gnomon, must be positioned parallel to Earth's axis of rotation and point toward a position in the sky that corresponds to due north, or the celestial north pole (CNP).

Therefore, at any given geographical latitude, the rod must be tilted at an angle to the horizon (that is, the horizontal) that is identical to the magnitude of that l

how does the sundial work