Spot the Frippet: something gibbous.

The moon is waning at the moment:



and it's waning gibbous, as in the illustration above. The word waning means that the moon is moving from being a full moon towards being a new moon (so the bright section of the moon, the bit you can see, is getting gradually smaller) and gibbous means that the bright bit is still more than half of a circle.

If you're in the Northern hemisphere, and you look at the moon, then if the bright bit of the moon is on the right-hand side of the disc then the moon is on its way to returning to being a full circle (waxing); and if the bright section is on the left then it's leaving its brightest phase behind behind (waning).

Mind you, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere then its the other way round. If the bright section is on the right then the brightest phase of the moon is retreating and if its on the left its...er...looming closer???

I expect you can think of something better. But I can't!

I can't think of anything much apart from the moon that is gibbous in shape, but if you can spot something spherical - like an orange, or a ball - and you have a torch or a table lamp, then if you go somewhere dark then you should be able to make your spherical thing appear gibbous.

As a side-effect, you'll have worked out how the moon appears to change shape, too.

If that's too complicated then you could try taking a big bite from a slice of cucumber; though unless you can see with your tongue then you're going to need a mirror to see the gibbous shape you've got inside your mouth.

Or, for the dainty, the same effect can be made with a pastry cutter.

There we are: an excuse to make biscuits!

Spot the Frippet: something gibbous. The word gibbous comes from the Latin gibba, which means hump.