A whole lot of flat earthers fall into this general category.
I so wanted to try this, although I'm not sure exactly what he's getting at. Unfortunately sunny California has lately looked more like what I imagine the UK is like:
Haven't seen the sun but a few days since before Christmas. This is where the sun will set later today. Is the guy trying to say that he used the actual bottom part of the square for his calculations or something like the the 2 trees that line up with the corners of the square?
This leaning tree, zoomed in, lines up with he right right corner of the square. But it's set back from the other tree, so what we want to look at is the red gate near the bottom of the photo:
And this zoomed in tree lines up with the left corner:
According to Google maps, that tree and gate are 880' apart. So one leg of our Pythagorean formula.
But then the guy says he lines the 45* part of the square up with a "crepuscular ray", while the vertical part of the square points at the sun. However, crepuscular rays usually only happen after the sun sets, but the term can be misused:
External Quote:
External Quote:
are
sunbeams that originate when the
Sun is just below the
horizon, during the
twilight period.
[1] Crepuscular rays are noticeable when the
contrast between light and dark is most obvious.
Loosely, the term
crepuscular rays is sometimes extended to the general phenomenon of rays of
sunlight that appear to converge at a point in the sky, irrespective of time of day.
[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular_rays
EDIT: I was doing this post on 2 different computers. I often use a crappy PC and type longer posts in Word, then paste, so as to attempt to correct my bad spelling. But my phone is linked to our Mac, so that's where my photos are easily grabbed and inserted, but my wife was using it. So, in the confusion I left out the following section:
I'm thinking of this as an example of trying to engage someone in what they say. Like asking a FE person to create a model of how the sun and moon and stars and such work. This guy said he estimated the height of the sun by holding a speed square up to the sky. I figured, ok, I have lots of speed squares, I can clearly see the horizon and when not in the middle of an atmospheric river, this is where the sun sets.
I'm not great at math, but I figured this wouldn't work, so it's more of showing what I thought the guy was trying to say. Again, meeting an FE person where they are coming from.
Maybe this needs it's own thread, estimating the height of the sun with a speed square or something.