How To Use Your Watch As A Compass

So, I am going to show you how to find north using an analog wristwatch. For demonstration purposes, I am just going to show you this big clock first, but it is quite straightforward. If you are in the northern hemisphere, what you do is you take the hour hand and you point the hour hand of your watch at the sun.

Then halfway between the hour hand and the twelve will be a line pointing to the south. Obviously, if you are in the southern hemisphere, that is going to be reversed. Halfway between the hour hand and the twelve will be a line pointing to the north.

So if I have a wristwatch, I can do it, I can take the hour hand. If we imagine that the sun, which unfortunately, it is a cloudy day, typical British weather, we can imagine that the sun is somewhere up there. I would point the hour hand towards the sun.

There is the twelve going that way, so the north south line would be through here, and I know that way would be pointing south because I am in the northern hemisphere and the sun is in the southern sky, so north would be opposite that line. If you have a digital watch, you can still get around this. You can draw it out on the ground.

You can look at the time on your watch and using sticks, build a clock on the ground. It is very straightforward, simple quick task, and you can just orientate your drawing on the ground so that the hour hand will point at the sun and you will still be able to find north. So I am drawing a quick picture here to demonstrate what I am talking about.

We have your clock face here. Here is the hour hand. You point that at the sun, and then you take a line up to the twelve like that, and you find the halfway point between those two lines, and that will point to the south.

So, opposite will be north, and it is as simple as that in the northern hemisphere. And that is how to find north using a watch. .