Thursday, March 26, 2015

Solar Eclipse Design Challenge & Eclipse Viewing Party

The students of 6.3 science class at AISB had a challenge: with one hour until Europe's last solar eclipse of this scale for nearly 15 years, they needed to design a device that would allow them to help people view the eclipse without looking directly at the sun.  

When the eclipse started many people were able to benefit from the work of these students.

You can see their designs below:

Kyle the designer of the Green Giant

Card and pinhole technique.

After looking at plans online, Laura was the first to decide to make a box viewer

Milada uses a piece of aluminum foil on her card

Mr. Ducharme enjoying the eclipse with Dries and his two person viewer.

Kyle's green giant allowed many to see the eclipse at a diameter of around 1 cm

Savannah enjoying the view

8th grader, Rio brings in his own viewer from Japan

Eclipse begins - Photo B. Kezsmarki

Photo B. Kezsmarki

Photo B. Kezsmarki

At over 50% - Photo B. Kezsmarki

Even Spike got in the mix!

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Solar Eclipse 2015 - Budapest Style!

Look out the window on the morning of Friday, March 20th and you might see something like this:
Image: NASA
People in Europe, Northern Africa and parts of Asia will have a special chance to view something that won't happen in this part of the world for another 15 years!
Time is GMT (Budapest is GMT +1)
Viewing warnings!
Did you know looking at a solar eclipse can permanently damage your eyes?!  If you want see this unique sight, you need to make use of some tools to help you see the eclipse.  Mr. Farren suggests a useful site that gives some tips on How to View an Eclipse.

Don't try to use your camera to capture the eclipse.  The same rays that can damage your eye could damage your the image sensor on your phone or camera.


Solar eclipses - how do they work?  
Check out the diagram below.  You can see the moon getting in the way of the sun's rays causing a shadow to appear on the earth.  Because the Moon is so much closer to the Earth and the Sun, we see the sun partially or even fully blocked out depending on our location in relation to the shadow.
Image: astronomy.starrynight.com/ 
Viewing at AISB
If you want to build a simple device to view the eclipse, meet in Mr. Scanga's room during the morning break on Friday and we'll have the supplies.  

At this point, the weather is nearly perfect (13 and sunny!) for viewing.  

We will be viewing the eclipse throughout the morning out on the terrace outside the science rooms, so feel free to stop by!