Mosaic Madness - Mosaic workshops for schools and communities - Bristol, UK

A Human Sundial allows you to become part of the machinery telling the time. It consists of two arcs of numbers set into the ground (British summer and winter time) and a set of months. By standing on the current month your shadow falls onto the time.
For more information see: www.sunclocks.com

Mosaic is the perfect medium to use to create a human sundial. Eye catching, durable and involving a whole school or group in it's creation. It can include extra decorative elements to link to a celebration or locality, and for schools can link to the National Curriculum.

Project requirements:

Level ground, ideally South facing ground - with room for a 6m diameter circle that is free from other shadows at all times.

Materials:

Swimming pool tiles (frost resistant and in a variety of colours), external grade tile cement, grout, concrete paving slabs of various sizes and shapes

Installation:

We will need a sunny day to plot first the North/South line and then East/West, then we plot the numbers and finally the months! The mosaics are on standard concrete paving slabs, laid as any normal slab

Links to the National Curriculum

Mathematics - each sundial is unique and is plotted using a series of calculations, for example the distance between the numbers and the central area are plotted out using an X-Y grid

History - the story of sundials and how different cultures in history measured time

Geography - longitude & latitude & how Earth relates to the Sun

English - the different names for each part of the sundial such as the Gnomon which describes the object or person that creates the shadow

Art & Design - mosaic as a medium, and the sundial itself can be used to express a subject, event or celebration

IT - using computers and the web to work out the calculations and find examples of sun dials across the world

Science - how a sundial works, and other ways of measuring time not involving the sun

Physical Education - you have to place yourself within the sundial for it to work and then you could measure your shadow and see how its length varies throughout the day