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The Viking sunstone story finally made sense after a lecture in Reykjavik
I used to roll my eyes at the whole sunstone thing, figured it was just a saga legend with no proof. Then I caught a talk by a geologist who showed how calcite crystals can actually split light and find the sun on cloudy days. He did a demo with a piece of Icelandic spar and a candle, and the polarization pattern lined up perfectly with where the sun should be. Has anyone else seen a real reproduction of that setup, or tried it with a cheap calcite chunk at home?
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the_anthony13d ago
Drove my buddy Lars to the hardware store last month and he grabbed a calcite chunk off the clearance rack, just to mess around. We set it up in his garage with a flashlight and a tiny candle, and the double image thing showed up exactly like the lecture described. He's still weirdly proud of it, keeps it on his coffee table next to a bag of expired beef jerky.
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