A brand new electronic GPS goes for hundreds of dollars, but this one won’t set you back anything. Using just a hockey stick, a protractor, an accurate clock, and a paper clip on a string, you can locate yourself about as accuratly as a 15th-century explorer could.
Knowing your place in the world takes years. Finding your place in the world requires only that you know which way is north. Knowing north, you can find your latitude — the theoretical parallel lines measured in degrees from the equator (0°) to the poles (90° north or south). Finding your longitude — the theoretical lines running from pole to pole around the planet (360°) — is a bit trickier, but anything is possible with a busted hockey stick.
This Global Positioning Stick (GPS) requires a clear view of Polaris (the North Star). Polaris never moves in the northern sky; it sits over the north pole. If you see it low on the horizon, you don’t need to worry about snow storms, but you’ll pay big bucks for ice time because you’re near the equator. The higher Polaris is in the sky, the further north you are. To get your declination, tape a protractor to the edge of your hockey stick, with the 90° mark at the centre of the stick. Tie or tape a string weighted with a paper clip to the flat edge of the protractor at the 90° mark. The string and clip should hang free at 0° when the stick is horizontal. As you sight along the stick towards Polaris, take a reading of the angle the string crosses. Do this several times and average the readings. This is your latitude; it will be somewhere between 0° and 90°.
Finding longitude is tougher. You must know the exact times of sunrise and sunset. Measure how many hours of daylight you have, or find that information in the newspaper, and divide those daylight hours by two. This is midday, when you will take your readings. Plant a length of straight hockey stick vertically on a flat surface. A few minutes before midday, go out and take readings of the stick’s shadow every five minutes. At the point where the shadow is smallest, note the time. This is your midday reading. Now find out what time it is in Greenwich, England, when it’s midday here. You cannot figure this out with a hockey stick unless you are beyond clever, but a newspaper or internet inquiry will work. The time zones of the world are based on the location of the observatory in Greenwich, England, and an atlas will show how many time zones from Greenwich you are. Add this number to your midday time. Now subtract the time of midday in Greenwich. Convert the left-over minutes to decimals. Multiply this whole thing by 15 (360° divided by 24 time zones). This is your longitude.
And there you have it: your exact position on the earth, determined by a broken hockey stick.