Using Your Hand To Calculate Daylight

If you are out of doors or living with minimal (or zero) electric power, projects tend to be assessed by how much daylight remains. Lighting from the sun is required so that you can carry out many tasks. When you know how much daylight remains, you are able to better determine how to best allocate your time.

This is important; especially in case you are used to a routine that features such things as a later evening meal as well as relaxing afterwards. Food preparation and cleanup will be much simpler to accomplish with sufficient light. It ISN'T FUN to start the day with encrusted cooking equipment that couldn't be correctly stored the night before thanks to weak lighting conditions. Consult any individual that's tried to erect a shelter after dark, and you will hear enough testimonies to cause you to desire to avoid that predicament also.

In order to judge how much daylight remains, locate the sun's position in the sky while not staring directly at it. Fully extend your arm and angle your hand so that you can see your palm with your fingers directed to one side. Observe the number of fingers that can fit in between the horizon's line and the sun. Each width of a finger is about 1/4 of an hour of daylight still left in the day. For instance, a full 4 fingers between the sun and the horizon would mean that you have about an hour of sunlight remaining (fifteen minutes X 4 fingers).

In the morning hours this process enables you to appraise how much time has gone by since sunrise. By measuring the finger widths between the sun and the eastern and western horizons, you can estimate the total number of hours of daylight you will have at your location. Half of this time will give you the number of hours between daybreak/nightfall and mid-day. This informational method will help you avoid becoming so absorbed in any single task that you simply run out of time needed to achieve other important things.