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The sun in four quarters

My younger daughter (aged six) was this morning asking about the direction in which a shadow was falling. I explained to her about the position of the sun and how that determined where the shadow was.

"What if the sun split into two?" she asked.

I said that this would probably be a fairly newsworthy event.

"What if it split into four quarters?" she continued. "It would be shining from four different places."

Mrs W then suggested that this would be very good news from the point of view of estate agents, as all gardens would have favourable aspects. (We didn't discuss whether some of the fractional suns would be brighter than the others and therefore still allow people to claim a premium price for their property.)

When mini-W started on about the sun splitting into eight quarters, I decided it was time to bring the conversation to an end. And start teaching some maths.

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