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The Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder
Penny

作成者

Penny

23. 9月 2026DK
46
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The Campbell-Stokes Sunshine Recorder

John Francis Campbell put a glass sphere in a wooden bowl in 1853 and let the focused sun char a track across it as the earth turned. George Gabriel Stokes replaced the bowl with a metal frame holding a replaceable paper card in 1879, and the design has not needed to change since. It is the only instrument in this batch with no moving parts and no scale to read. The sphere focuses sunlight to a point; the point sweeps along the card as the sun moves; where the sun was bright enough it burns, and where cloud intervened it does not. At the end of the day the card IS the record — a physical trace of the whole day's sunshine. There is a warning built into the object. A glass sphere in your garden focuses sunlight to a spot hot enough to set fire to dry material, and it does it whether or not you are paying attention.
上級者
2 days

手順

1

Get a solid sphere, and respect it

Use a solid glass sphere of 75 to 100 mm diameter. From the moment you own it, treat it as a fire source. A 90 mm sphere concentrates sunlight roughly a thousandfold. Left on a windowsill it will scorch a curtain, a carpet or a bench top, and it has started house fires. Keep it covered whenever it is not mounted in the instrument, and site the instrument where its focus can only ever fall on the card and the metal frame — never on wood, thatch, decking or dry grass.

このステップの材料:

無垢ガラス球無垢ガラス球1 個
2

Make the bowl at the right radius

The card must sit exactly at the sphere's focal surface, which for a solid sphere of refractive index about 1.5 lies roughly half a radius beyond its surface — so the bowl's radius is about 1.5 times the sphere's radius. Work it out for your own sphere, then check it in sunlight before you build the frame: hold a card at various distances until the burn is a sharp point rather than a smear. A bowl a few millimetres out gives a broad scorch that cannot be read to the nearest tenth of an hour.

このステップの材料:

合板合板1 枚

必要な工具:

手のこぎり手のこぎり
紙やすり紙やすり
定規定規
3

Set the axis to your latitude and point it at true north

Tilt the bowl's axis so it is parallel to the earth's axis — that means an elevation equal to your latitude — and align it on TRUE north, not magnetic. Aligned this way, the sun's focus sweeps along the card at a constant rate all day and all year, so equal lengths of burn mean equal times. Get the alignment wrong and the time scale stretches and squeezes through the day. Find true north from the sun at local noon, or correct your compass for the local magnetic declination.

このステップの材料:

木ダボ木ダボ2 個
亜鉛めっき釘亜鉛めっき釘20 個

必要な工具:

方位磁針方位磁針
釘抜き付き金づち釘抜き付き金づち
4

Use the right card, and change it daily

Use a stiff, uncoated card marked with hour lines. Fit it before sunrise and remove it after sunset, every day, and write the date on it immediately. The standard uses three card shapes through the year — long curved cards for summer, short ones for winter — because the sun's track across the bowl moves with the seasons. Glossy or coated card does not char cleanly; plain matt card does. An unmarked, undated card is an abstract drawing within a week.

このステップの材料:

カードストックカードストック40 個
印画紙(多階調)印画紙(多階調)1 パック
5

Read the burn as duration, not intensity

Measure the total LENGTH of burnt track against the hour lines and add the segments. Gaps are cloud. This instrument measures bright-sunshine DURATION and nothing else. A deep, wide burn and a faint one both count as sunshine, so it cannot tell you how much energy arrived — for that you need a pyranometer. Knowing precisely which question your instrument answers is worth more than a more expensive instrument answering a question you did not ask.

必要な工具:

定規定規
6

Focus, threshold and what the card can resolve

Jupyter ノートブックを読み込み中…

必要な工具:

定規定規
7

Site it where nothing shades it and nothing burns

Mount it clear of anything that casts a shadow between sunrise and sunset — especially low winter sun, which reaches under obstacles that clear the summer sun entirely. Then walk round it at several times of day and check where the focus lands when the card is absent or has burnt through. Metal or stone beneath, always. This is the only instrument in this batch that can burn your shed down, and it will do it on the one sunny afternoon you forgot to fit a card.

このステップの材料:

アルミ箔アルミ箔1 巻

必要な工具:

方位磁針方位磁針

材料

7

必要な工具

5

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CC0 パブリックドメイン

このブループリントはCC0で公開されています。許可を求めずに、自由にコピー、修正、配布、あらゆる目的で使用できます。

メイカーを応援するには、ブループリント経由で製品を購入してください。メイカーには メイカーコミッション がベンダーにより設定されています。または、このブループリントの新しいイテレーションを作成し、自分のブループリントにコネクションとして含めて収益を共有できます。

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