It is a well known fact that in the UK, Japan, Korea and Switzerland, if you face the sun at midday, you are facing South.
On a visit to the Philippines once, I had an unusual experience.
My assistant, Raquel lives in Barangay Hilusig, in the center of the Island of Leyte, Visayas.
The bus from Tacloban City (1oo km away) runs right by her home on the concreted National Highway from Manila to Davao City. Believe me, it is a noisy highway, despite being halfway up the mountain and in the jungle!
In the Philippines, there are no bus stops, you just wait and flag the bus down.
I must have waited outside her house a dozen times before I figured out what was wrong.
In the Philippines, whose latitude varies between 6 degrees and 15 degrees (Latitude being the angle that the imaginary line between the center of the earth, the equator, and the place you are on the surface, makes. For example, the latitude of the north pole is 90 degrees, a right angle). England is about 55 degrees latitude, that is, much more to the north.
In the daytime, the sun in the Philippines is almost always directly overhead, being so far south.
The highway runs exactly North to South past Raquel's home, and I was standing on it, looking down it, in the southerly direction.
Then I noticed something really strange. It was midday, and being north of the equator, my shadow should have been behind me. But it was in front of me.
It took me the whole bus journey (90 minutes) to work it out:
The Tropic of Cancer is there to indicate the extent that the Earth's tilt in space affects the climate. It is at 23.5 degrees latitude. At June 21, the sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer.
Since the Philippines is above the equator but below the Tropic, at some points in the year, the sun is actually NORTH when you face it, as the diagram shows.
This is what caused my shadow to be in front of me when I faced south.
The effect is subtle and directly related to the "midnight sun" as seen above the Arctic Circle.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
A Degree of Latitude
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Off the top of my head, I wonder if migrating birds have to deal with this issue, as it might confuse them. But then, did you say it was Summer, when birds do not migrate? Hmm!!! Could Global Warming eventually lead to migrating birds migrating at wrong times and encountering problems they never had to deal with in the past? Okay, maybe this is off topic being off the top of my head, but you have me thinking about other odd possibilities we may never think of. Thanks!
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