Need suggestions for solar eclipse viewing

[Gracelovesthegalaxy]

Hi everyone. I’m a high school student and member of MAS and recently decided to help with my school’s total solar eclipse event. We don’t have access to glasses but we thought about doing the hole in the notecard and having those available for students, as well as using sun spotters. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to make this event fun and engaging for students? Thanks!

[SEmert]

Here are a couple of ideas:

1. You already mentioned the hole in the notecard, making a pinhole camera to project the shape of the eclipse on a card/table/ground, etc. You could expand on that idea by taking a cheap, thin cutting board from a dollar store, marking a grid on it and drilling lots of approx. 3/16" holes to project a pattern of eclipse shapes. The more, the merrier!

2. If you have a small refractor available, even a cheap "department store" refractor, you can make a Sun Funnel. Plans are available on both the NASA site and the AAS site https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/make-sun-funnel and https://aas.org/sites/default/files/202 ... l_v3.4.pdf Unfortunately, the NASA plans reference rear screen material that, while just about perfect, is very hard to obtain and the AAS plans reference material that is easier to obtain but is in my opinion too opaque. Both reference using translucent shower liner plastic as an alternative, which works but takes a couple of layers to darken the sun so it isn't too bright in the projection. If you want to do this, I used some gray Rit fabric dye on some shower curtain material to darken it. I used one dyed layer plus one undyed layer which works out to about the right brightness. I have some left over from a Sun Funnel I made last month, and you can have it if you contact me. The rest of the parts for the Sun Funnel are readily available at any hardware store. Sun Funnels are great because kids can get a selfie of themselves and the eclipse in the picture at the same time.

3. For International Observe the Moon Day a couple years ago, I built a scale Earth-Moon system on a yardstick. If you can find a ball or bead about 30mm in diameter (1.2 to 1.25") for the Earth and another about 8-10mm (.3" to .4") for the Moon, glue them to kebob skewers to hold them up, and put the 35" apart on a yardstick, you have a pretty good scale representation of the Earth-Moon system. At the star party at ELO, we found the bright point light source at the top of Onan's Mama Bear roof allowed us to project the "Moon's" shadow on the "Earth", illustrating the solar eclipse as it goes across the Earth. It worked the other way around too, illustrating a Lunar eclipse. I haven't tested it, but hopefully the Sun itself could be a good light source to project the shadow. If not, get a spotlight or bright flashlight and do it indoors.

4. Speaking of shadows, it's often mentioned how, when nearing a total eclipse, how shadows get "weird" because of the crescent shape of the remaining Sun. With something L shaped that can show how the shadow differs along the long edge of the crescent versus the short thickness of the remaining Sun, you can see on one side the shadow is sharp and the other way it is the "normal" level of fuzziness because the Sun is 1/2 degree wide. I'm not sure how well it would work with the 75% maximum eclipse in Minnesota, but it may be worth a try.

5. The MAS outreach group has ice cream buckets with sand in them to illustrate the relative gravity at the surface of the Moon and the planets of the Solar System. I've made a smaller equivalent of that set using some screw top plastic containers from a dollar store. Each container is about 3.5" wide x 4" deep x 5.5" tall, with pictures of the Moon and the planets on the jars together with the pertinent information, and I glued the screw tops on so kids can't open them. I could lend the set to you for your event if you want to contact me.

6. It's interesting seeing the actual path of the eclipse across the Earth. The Great American Eclipse web page has a good flyover video showing the path. If you have access to a PC projector, that could be a good graphic. https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/?m ... 2fa896a351

7. While not specifically eclipse related, if you wanted a hands-on workshop idea for kids, you could have them make planispheres. Print out the star wheel and the holder for Uncle Al's Star Wheel on 110 lb heavy paper stock, pre-drill a hole so they can easily cut the window cutout in the holder with scissors, have some Scotch tape to tape the edges of the holder, give them directions on building it, let them have at it, and when they're done teach them how to use a planisphere. https://lawrencehallofscience.org/wp-co ... rwheel.pdf

[Gracelovesthegalaxy]

Oh my gosh thank you so much! These tips will be extremely helpful. I did some research on the sun funnel and I agree that it would be a great idea. We have plans to make a couple of those. As of right now we even have a parent bringing in their solar telescope for viewing(insanely cool). I never knew shadows differed from an approaching eclipse(other than that they go away as it gets darker), that's super interesting and I'll definitely have to let people know and see how that looks. Thank you so much for offering to lend the buckets but our middle school across the street reached out(since they are also viewing the eclipse and they have buckets as well). I think the PC projector is a great idea; I've talked to the Physics teacher at my school and he is also on board with using a projector. Thanks again! -Grace

[SEmert]

Glad some of the ideas helped. Also, as long as you're thinking of using the PC projector to show the animated path of the eclipse, there are going to be a number of sites showing the total eclipse as they happen. You could bring up at least one of those sites as totality passes through that location.

[SEmert]

Also, instead of my first thought of destroying a cheap cutting board, you can instead use a colander for the dense pattern of holes. And you can re-use the colander for its normal purpose afterwards.

An alternative to 2, the yardstick Earth-Moon system model, you can use an appropriately sized pair of Styrofoam balls, connected with an scale appropriate length of string.

Good luck with your event!

[zimitsj]

Here are two links to NASA pages that have good information. The first one covers many different ways to view the eclipse and contains several methods you could use, including some fun and interesting ways to view the partial phase. The second video is targeting younger kids for making a pinhole projector that was shown in the first link, but the instructions work for all ages.

https://science.nasa.gov/feature/solar-eclipse-guide/
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14391