Ann Arbor  

 Sundial: 1088
State/Province:  Michigan Country:  USA
Dial Type:  Noon Mark or Meridian Dial Condition:  Good
  Latitude and Longitude: 42° 15.273' N  83° 50.165’ W
Location: Access: This is a private dial. See below for access details.
  • Emerson School 5425 Scio Church Road, Ann Arbor, MI
    Dial is located just south of Scio Church Road west of the school's driveway. If school is in session, contact the school office prior to your visit.
 
Description:
  • Dial is a calendar dial that marks noon on the solstices and equinoxes by projecting a circle of sunlight onto one of three horizontal discs on the meridian line dial face. To create the round sunlight spots the vertical arm has three elliptical holes to match the solar angles for the two solstices and the equinox. The disk closest to the gnomon (with highest solar angle) is for the summer solstice. Middle disk is for the equinoxes, and the farthest disk (with lowest solar angle) is for the winter solstice. Notice in the photo that the summer hole in the vertical arm is considerably stretched to account for the high angle of the sun.

    Designer Mike Kapetan commented about his dial,"The "inspiration" for the seasonal sundial resulted from a problem that was assigned to a sculpture class that I taught at University of Michigan back in the 1980s. I had been interested in monuments like Stonehenge since the early 1960s, when I watched a TV special program called "Stonehenge Decoded." A Harvard astronomer had used an early computer (ENIAC, I believe) to identify major solar and lunar alignments marked by Stonehenge. So, I divided my sculpture students into teams and asked them to design an artifact that addressed the sun at local noon on the summer solstice. As they worked through the problem, I decided to design such an object myself. And I expanded the question to include the winter solstice and the spring and fall equinoxes. The spacing of the three noon marks results from the spacing of the three apertures on the gnomon. And I chose to space the three apertures at intervals of the Golden Section. Why? Because the joints of the human fingers are spaced at Golden Section intervals. Therefore the gnomon is, in effect, a metaphorical finger. Thus I hoped to invoke a line of poetry written by Omar Khayyam: 'The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.' "
 
General Information:
  • Owner: Emerson School
  • Designer: Mike Kapetan
  • Builder: Mike Kapetan
  • Construction Date: 1989
 

Last Revised: 2023:06:19 22:49