Black and white diamonds: Monday photo shoot

Monday Photo Shoot: Picture something that shows off something geometrical. Squares, cubes, vectors, right angles, tangents and so on; basically, any picture that shows geometrical forms and shapes in an interesting and obvious way.

                                                            

Most of you know that I went to the coast a few weeks ago, and visited Cape Lookout, one of the barrier islands off of North Carolina. I had inserted pictures of me and Steve standing in front of the lighthouse in a previous entry. I didn't want to repeat the same photo, so here's a slightly different one.

In this version, you see a crew of NC Coast Guard going up into the lighthouse, but I couldn't find out the nature of their business. I'm sure they didn't change any lightbulbs up there.

(<grin> couldn't resist that one!)

But in keeping with the theme for this week's photo shoot, I included the lighthouse for its obvious diamond-shaped geometric pattern.

I want to carry this one step further, and pass on some very interesting information about this pattern. If I may paraphrase from the brochure I have in my hand this very minute:

On a lighthouse, the pattern painted on it is called a "daymark." Daymarks help people at sea to distinguish one lighthouse from another during the day. (You knew that part, didn't you?) Today we call the pattern on the Cape Lookout lighthouse the diamond pattern, but when it was first painted in 1873, it was officially a "diagonal checker" pattern.

Here's the really interesting part about the purpose of this pattern... It isn't just to set it apart from other lighthouses off the NC coast. The black diamond shapes are aligned with North/South, and the white diamond shapes are aligned with East/West. So depending from which direction you approach it, you will see a different pattern (black on white, or white on black).

                                 

And now I quote directly: "Cape Lookout is the only lighthouse to change like this, all others remain the same regardless of viewing directions."

I didn't know this information while I was there. If I had, I would have walked around to the other side of the lighthouse to get the picture of white diamonds. This is the closest thing I have to giving you an idea of that change in pattern from black to white. You can imagine the rest!

(From: Cape Lookout Lighthouse, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior and Cape Lookout National Seashore, North Carolina.)

See, I told you it would be interesting.

If you have an interesting geometric photo to show off, click on the link to Scalzi's photo shoot assignment so you can leave your entry with him. Oh, and don't forget to leave your link here as well.

I love geometry!

Tags: Cape Lookout, Monday Photo Shoot, geometry, blogplugs