What are sun dials?

A sun dial is like a clock that uses the sun to tell time.

Imagine you have a stick in the ground, and as the day goes on, the shadow from that stick moves around, just like your hand moves when you count seconds on a clock. That’s how a sun dial works! It has a part called the gnomon, which is like the stick, and as the sun moves across the sky, the shadow it casts changes position on a flat surface marked with numbers or lines, these are like the numbers on a clock.

A sun dial doesn’t need batteries or electricity. It just needs sunlight! If you put one in your backyard, you can see how the shadow moves from morning to afternoon, just like how your hands move when you tell time on a watch.

Sometimes, people make sun dials with special shapes or designs, they might look like a face of a clock or have pretty lines and numbers. But no matter how fancy it looks, it's still just using the sun’s movement to help us know what time it is.