Navigating with the Kamal
Abstract
The students build and use an old navigational tool from the Arab world of the 9th century, the kamal. After an introduction to historic seafaring and navigation, they build this simple tool and understand how it can be used to measure angles. After learning that the elevation of Polaris is (almost) identical to the latitude of the observer, they apply this knowledge while using the kamal. During a field trip, they actually measure the elevation of Polaris. The result is compared with modern methods.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.04482,
title = {Navigating with the Kamal},
author = {Markus Nielbock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.04482},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
8 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication at AstroEDU. This resource was developed in the framework of Space Awareness. Space Awareness is funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Programme under grant agreement no. 638653. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1708.07700, arXif:1708.08777, arXiv:1708.08332