Difference between hand compass and car compass?

The other day it came across my mind. There is a subtle difference between these two things. Hand magnet shows the direction by pointing it's arrow towards that direction. Where as the car compass points the arrow opposite to the direction we are heading so that we could see the direction symbol.

For example you are driving your car heading north. If you had a general compass, the arrow with north mark should point away from you towards direction north. But you are sitting inside the car and you can't afford to see the arrow from your side. It could be dangerous too to look at the magnet lying some where next to you. Of course, if you are walking then it's easy for you to keep it on your palm horizontally and see the arrow to figure out the direction.

Where as car compass would be hanging by windshield in front of you in your car. So when you are driving towards north, the car compass should let you know that you are driving north by showing you arrow with north symbol just like the other one does. That's why it shows the north arrow towards you exactly opposite to the direction you are going. Which means they put the symbols on the opposite arrows of original directions. For south you see north and vice versa.

The simple reason for this is the general compass would be some where so that you don't have raise your head upwards. Where as for car compass you need either to raise your head or align your vision with car compass hanging down a windshield.  Even if car compass shows the original direction north when you are driving north on the north side of the magnet, then how can you see the arrow with symbol as it would be away from you on the other side of the magnet. That's why they swap the symbols. Cool. Right?

Some times we just use things and we never think of these small things. For example, you have car compass in your hand and you try to go some where following that. That's it you end up in the wrong direction if you don't know the funda behind it. So be careful when ever you have a compass in your hand to know which one it is. Otherwise you might end up in trouble.

Maps and directions

When I was small kid I was always curious about geography. At one point I remembered names of every country and it's capital city on this earth. I was very interested in looking at earth maps. Looking back it's amazing to see how much has changed over the years. Now people take their gadgets and type the address and bam it gives you the directions. In the old days it was just maps on paper. I still think maps on paper are cool compared to all these electronic maps. If you know how to use these paper maps you know how to locate directions on your own even in the new places or in the places where there is no signal for your cell phone.

Anyway, I want to write how I figured out certain things when it came to finding which direction I'm heading. All these things might sound simple to you. But I'm sure given the situation all these things never come across one's mind.

One day I was walking through the Glendale city and suddenly I had no clue which direction I was heading towards. The good thing about walking is you can simply look at the street names and immediately you know the direction. For example, you are walking on Brand Street and if you look at the street signs, you see either N. Brand St. or S. Brand St. Which means you are either walking south or north.

Then the second thing is to find south or north. The way streets are divided into two halves is by doing it from the center of the city. For example, in Glendale city the intersection of Brand and Broadway is considered to be the center of the city. So, Brand is divided into South Brand and North Brand from the Broadway Street. For example you are walking on south part of Brand street. There could be many cross streets before you see the Broadway street. Which means even if you are heading towards north, you could be on the S. Brand St. for long time. Which means until you don't cross Broadway you don't see N. Brand St. even though you are walking towards north on Brand Street, to be precise towards north on S. Brand St.

So how do you figure out the direction? Simple. Look at the numbers on the street signs. Generally, you see something like 400 S. Brand St., 300 S. Brand St. etc on the street sign boards at the cross sections of the streets (here streets crossing through S. Brand St.). I've already told you that they divide the street from the center of the city. Which means, on S. Brand St. the numbering starts from number 1 in the increasing manner towards direction south. Similarly, numbers increase towards north direction on N. Brand St. Which means if you are walking towards North on S. Brand St. the numbers on the sign boards keep decreasing as long as you walk towards the center of the city. Finally it goes to the number 1 and immediately N. Brand St. starts and the number again starts from 1 but this time increases if you are still walking north.

Otherwise, i.e., if the numbers are increasing on S. Brand St. then you are walking towards south. Same with N. Brand St. I mean, if you are waling on N. Brand St and the numbers keep increasing on sign boards then you are walking north. Otherwise, you are walking towards south. As simple as that.

Same rules apply for the streets aligned in the east and west directions. Which means, even when you don't have maps or cell phone or gps gadget with you, you still should be fine as long as you know which direction you should head to go to your place. If you really don't know in which direction your place is located, then you are definitely screwed. Even then it's no big deal as long as you are not nervous or tense. Just go to gas station and buy one map. Then you can figure out where your place is located and which routes you should take to reach home.

I strongly believe that if you look at paper maps you never forget the entire layout and you get the big picture of city directions printed on your mind. Otherwise, at least try to spend some time looking at google maps and get yourself well acquainted with city layout.

Before I figure it out, one day I went to airport to leave my friend. When he asked whether I'd be fine to go back home from LA airport, I gave him very confident answer even though I didn't have my cell with me to look for directions. The reason for my swagger was that I knew the directions by then. Funnily, when I went there to take the highway, the entrance was closed and I was screwed big time. I had no clue which way I should go from there and I was simply driving in some direction.

Still I was not tense or worried though. The best thing one could do to himself or herself is not to panic in situations like this. More over I didn't have any cash on me or credit cards. The only thing I had with me was my driving license. Of course, just to look for directions I don't have to buy maps but just have a mere look at them. Still, I didn't want to do that as I was not sure how store assistant would feel if he caught me doing that. Anyway, the point is I didn't panic since I knew some what about these highway numbering system and which highways would take me home.

So, I kept on driving for a while in some direction. The one thing I knew for sure was the airport was next to ocean in the west. So if I kept driving and if it was west direction, then I should see the ocean. But I never saw it, so I took right turn and kept on going. Finally, I saw the ocean and I was like ok now I'm driving towards west. Then I went in the opposite direction until I saw some highway. From there some how I figured out.

Even then I had to have known the highways earlier. Otherwise, it would have been tough. Ok now what's the lesson I learned from that trip? Simple. Always carry some cash on you or at least credit cards. Make sure that you have your cell phone, that too fully charged. The other thing you should do is to have paper maps in the car. They would come very handy. Other simple thing that would come very handy is car compass. You could just put it there on the windshield and you know the directions all the time.

In the end, no matter what gadgets and stuff you have with you, it really doesn't matter as long as you don't use your brains. The more you depend on gadgets the more numb your brain becomes. There are even ways to figure out directions by looking at your own shadow.

I'm sure you must be thinking I must be having tonnes of free time to figure out these things. Yes, sadly I do. Still I take pride in myself in figuring out things like this. I'm very confident that I could come out of any situation like getting suck some where in forests.

In the end we should never forget the fact that we are all given brains. So let's put them to use at least now and then. Now, once I figured out how to know the directions by looking at the street signs and by having the city layout, I feel like I don't need directions to go some where. I look at them one time and I'm good to go as long as I can afford to figure out the directions when something goes wrong. Key is start early.

Daylight saving time

Wanted to write about it for long time. I don't remember when it crossed my mind first time. When I was doing my masters in Sweden, I guess I came across the method of adjusting time at certain point of time in a year. In a way it confused the hell out of me to understand why it was adopted. Eventually, I came to know that it was introduced to lower the consumption. I guess it makes sense as in the old days lighting was the only form of electrical usage. It seems they wanted to add the daylight to afternoons and reduce the light in the mornings. If you don't know what it is, let me explain to you. It is a practice of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more time and mornings have less.

Anyway, coming to the point, almost a year back I was talking to one of my friend about it and we couldn't figure out whether it was in effect during the winters or summers. Later, looking at wikipedia we were able to figure out the answer. Then I kept on thinking about it and came up with some solution of my own to find when it would be implemented in a year.

In my home country, India, we don't use daylight saving time since our daylight pattern doesn't change much through out the year. Which means we don't advance the clocks at all at any point in a year. So I thought I could take it as a reference point. Even better reference point is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) which doesn't change just like Indian Standard Time (IST).

We always take GMT as reference when ever we want to mention the time in different time zones. For example, for now football world cup is happening in South Africa and when ever they publish schedule they do it in reference to GMT. Which means Greenwich longitude is zero degrees. Of course, you don't have to think all of this to come to this conclusion. If you know the map, you simply know that Greenwich, London is on zero degree longitude meridian.

The second step is to find the longitude of some time zone in US. I took eastern time zone and took the longitude of center of this zone from the map. You can get it from the google maps. Generally, 75 degrees is considered for the eastern time zone. So now you know that the longitude difference from Greenwich to eastern time zone is 75 degrees.

As all of you know, one degree of longitude constitutes for 4 minutes in time. If you don't know how I came to this conclusion let me explain it to you. There are 360 degrees of longitudes that go through the earth from east to west. Of course, we need to consider only longitudes since earth always rotates towards east and this is the reason you see the sun in the east when you wake up early in the mornings. Latitudes refer to north-south directions. You all know that it takes 24 hours to complete one rotation around it self. To be precise little less than 24 hours and this is the reason we employ leap years to offset this value. So it takes 24 hours for 360 degrees. Hence it takes 24/360 hours for one degree of longitude. Which comes to a value of 4 minutes (24hours=24*60 minutes).

So now you know that the longitude difference of 75 degrees comes to 75*4=300 minutes=300/60=5 hours. Which  means if the time in Greenwich is 9PM and since Greenwich is east of US, we subtract 5 hours from this time and we get the eastern standard time which is nothing but 9-5=4PM.

But when we did the calculation the time in the eastern zone was 5PM. It was summer and I was elated to know that my theory proved to me that daylight saving time would generally be employed during the summers. Of course, like I said it makes sense since they wanted to advance the clock so that afternoon would have more time. Which means there would be no need to turn on the lights in the evenings as we are advancing the clock.

Ok let me put it this way. For example, at your place during the summer sun sets around 7 in the evening. But during daylight saving time we advance our clocks one our ahead which means time would be 8 in the evening. Right? Of course sun always sets at the same time. It's just we are the ones changing the time by advancing the clocks. So you were used to turning on the lights around 7pm and since we advanced the clocks by one hour you would be turning on the lights around 8PM there by saving one hour consumption of electricity.

In the old days electricity consumption was a big issue and hence they came up with this idea. It no longer is a issue, but still people are stuck with the tradition I guess. At the same time you can argue that how about the mornings. I mean consumption in the mornings. How many of us turn on the lights in the mornings. I mean, by the time we wake up in the mornings there is already sun and so there is no need for lights. Generally, during summers sun comes up by 5 it self. So even when you advance the clock by one hour sun comes up at 6am. Not that much difference considering most of the people don't wake up at 5am.

Finally, just to let you know the clocks are adjusted backward later in the winters. Which means we lose one hour time on that specific day where as we gain one hour on the day when the clocks are adjusted one hour forward.

Over all, I found it to be very fascinating the way it came into existence. Awesome. In the end my theory made me feel happy that I was able to prove that daylight saving time is employed in the summers.

For long time, I wanted to write about it and finally here it is. Next time I'm going to write something about maps which I found very interesting. Believe me, you will too even though it might sound very trivial to you. I'm sure what ever I wrote until now might be nothing. Just curious, did you know all this before you read this or if I asked you to prove it, would you be able to do it on your own with out looking at any web sites like wikipedia? If not, then don't you think you learned something new?