Finding North

Objective: Find direct North.
Materials: 1 stick or flagpole, 1 piece of string.
Procedure:

At about 11:00, mark an x at the tip of shadow created by your stick or fixed pole (eg. flagpole). Use this X as the starting point for your circle.Simply tie the string to the stick which must be vertical, and pull the string tight. Then with chalk or another utensil mark the circumference of the circle that you will create by keeping the string tight and moving it in a circular direction.

About every 10 minutes mark an additional x at the tip of the shadow. Do this until about 1 pm. By then, one of the x's should have touched the outline of your circle. This will be the X on the right

Now, use your string to draw two arcs. Start with the X that lies to your right. Using a 'radius' a little more than half the distance to the first X on the circle, make an arc that bows away from the x and intersects your circle. Repeat this procedure for the left X. The end result should look like this:

The straight line that passes through the two points of the archs' intersections, points directly North/South.