{"id":750,"date":"2021-08-28T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/?p=750"},"modified":"2022-04-06T14:52:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T19:52:39","slug":"engineering-sundial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/engineering-sundial\/","title":{"rendered":"The Engineering Quad\u2019s Iconic Sundial Marries Art and Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Highly accurate time-keeping instrument was designed by physicist and Cornell President Emeritus Dale Corson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Alexandra Bond ’12<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sundial on the Engineering Quad isn\u2019t just a beloved campus fixture\u2014it\u2019s one of the most accurate instruments of its kind on the planet. Assuming that the sun is shining, users need only turn a dial on the six-foot-wide, 650-pound sundial\u2019s granite base to indicate that day\u2019s date, and they can see the correct time to the minute, twelve hours a day, all year round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Installed in 1980, the instrument is named in memory of Joseph Pew Jr. 1908\u2014an industrialist, engineering alum, and prominent Cornell benefactor who\u2019s also the namesake of the Engineering Quad. Its creation was the brainchild of Pew\u2019s widow, who thought a sundial would be a fitting homage to her late husband, given his long association with the college. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when the University drew up its initial proposal for the device, the design met with vocal resistance from a prominent figure: President Emeritus Dale Corson<\/a>. Corson\u2014a physicist who had previously served as Engineering dean\u2014had been a sundial aficionado since his days studying celestial navigation in the U.S. Army Air Corps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Corson
Corson testing the newly redesigned sundial in 2006. (Photo by Jason Koski\/Cornell University)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He strongly objected to the project\u2019s original design, which he dismissed as merely a \u201cgarden ornament.\u201d As Corson, who passed away in 2012, once recalled: \u201cI had so much criticism of it that they said, \u2018Well, you do it.\u2019\u201d So he teamed up with Richard Phelan, MS \u201950, then a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, to reimagine the instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the sundial they ultimately created<\/a> tell time so accurately and reliably? It works like this: Along one of its inner curves is a series of lines, one for each minute from 6 a.m.\u20136 p.m.; when the sun shines, a thin cable casts a shadow indicating the time. A system of gears, cables, and pulleys within the granite base is connected to the sundial\u2019s heart: a grooved metal disk called the cam. Its careful design incorporates such factors as Ithaca\u2019s latitude and longitude, the speed at which the sun travels across the sky, the tilt of Earth\u2019s axis, and the irregularity of its orbit around the sun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had so much criticism of it that they said, \u2018Well, you do it.\u2019<\/p>President Emeritus Dale Corson<\/strong><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

All that precise engineering is built into the device\u2014meaning that no technical know-how is needed to use it. \u201cIn fact,\u201d as a 2009 book on Corson<\/a> notes, \u201cit was intended to be what Phelan [called] an \u2018audience-participation sculpture\u2019\u2014the first person who happens along in the morning sets the date.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The sundial in situ. (Photo by Lisa Banlaki Frank)<\/em>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Placement was also key: as the book points out, the sundial\u2019s location was determined not by aesthetics, but by such practicalities as maximum year-round sunlight and the stability of the underlying ground. In 2006, the timepiece got even more accurate when Corson and Rodney Bowman, a scientific instrument maker on campus, replaced the cam with an upgraded version, crafted in the Clark Hall machine shop. (Phelan had retired in 1988.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDale was about ninety years old at the time,\u201d recalls Stanley Carpenter, who managed the machine shop until his retirement in 2009. \u201cBut working on this project, he was as enthusiastic as a freshman.\u201d The original cam had rusted over the previous 26 years\u2014so the pair made the replacement out of corrosion-resistant stainless steel. \u201cConsidering the weather in Ithaca,\u201d says Carpenter, \u201cthis was a huge improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Top image: Photo illustration by Cornell University.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published October 5, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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