Coding classes in Midlothian

First the learner finds where Newbattle is. The listing gives an Ordnance Survey grid reference, and a standard formula converts it to latitude: about 55.9 degrees north. Next comes the sun. For any date and any hour of solar time, a few lines of trigonometry give the sun's direction as an arrow of length one, with parts pointing east, north and up. Each face of the dial is given its own arrow, pointing straight out from the stone. We assume the eight faces point north, north-east and so on round the compass; the listing does not say. A face can only catch the sun if the sun is above the horizon and in front of it, which the dot product of the two arrows tests: positive means lit.

The surprise is at midsummer. The north face, which never sees the sun in winter, is lit for 7.6 hours: from about 03:20 to 07:10 in solar time, and again from about 16:50 to 20:40. The south face, the one everyone assumes is the sunniest, gets only 9.7 hours, fewer than the south-east and south-west faces, because for the first and last hours of a long summer day the sun is behind it. At the equinox the south face catches all 12 hours of daylight, while the north face gets none. In midwinter, three of the eight faces stay in shadow all day. With eight faces, at least one is always usable whenever the sun is up.

The same few lines also give the length of the day and the height of the sun. At midsummer the noon sun stands about 57.6 degrees above the horizon; at midwinter only 10.7. Our day lengths are pure geometry: real sunrise comes a little earlier and sunset a little later because the atmosphere bends light, so published times are slightly longer. Learners can add that correction as an extension.

So a Midlothian teenager should still learn to code in 2026, because testing an assumption is harder, and more valuable, than running a formula. The longer argument is in why teenagers should still learn to code in 2026.