Venus transit
Realization: I was raised to be interested in science.
I remember watching a partial solar eclipse from the sidewalk in front of our house; I'm pretty sure I was in elementary school. It was a Big Deal - talked about at school and at home. We made pinhole projectors: crescents on the sidewalk. And Mom pointed out that all the sundapples, the bits of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the big trees, were also crescent-shaped. It was the COOLEST THING. Last month my folks made the trek northward to see the full annular eclipse; I didn't, but I did make a pinhole projector and dragged B outside with me to look at the shadows and the bright crescents. It boggles me somewhat, just how little my friends seemed to care - that to them it was kind of interesting, but not enough to get excited about or go outside to see.
We had at-home experiment kits from the Exploratorium, and dyed flowers by putting foodcoloring in the water, and made gak and Oobleck. The prize box had rocks and compasses. We went to see caves wherever there were caves (much the same as with trains), and did the junior ranger programs, and got up in the middle of the night to drive to somewhere with less light pollution for meteor showers. Dad pointed out how to find satellites in the night sky. Mom pulled out the bird books to identify new birds at the birdfeeder. And lava tubes! How those things are made is super nifty, guys! Basically, world = full of awesome.
Today my dad showed up at my desk at work with binoculars (for projection) and solar-viewing glasses, because the Venus transit is in progress. The binoculars projected an image of the sun a little bigger than a quarter, on one of the desks by the window. We could see the tiny solid dot that is Venus, and a few other little dark splodges that were sunspots (verified as "not just dust on the lens" because when projecting through both lenses of the binoculars, the two images matched). So many cool things going on at once! Projection via lenses, and sunspots, and the silhouette of Venus hanging out right between us and the sun, and catching the last chance in any of our lifetimes to see this.
I remember watching a partial solar eclipse from the sidewalk in front of our house; I'm pretty sure I was in elementary school. It was a Big Deal - talked about at school and at home. We made pinhole projectors: crescents on the sidewalk. And Mom pointed out that all the sundapples, the bits of sunlight filtering through the leaves of the big trees, were also crescent-shaped. It was the COOLEST THING. Last month my folks made the trek northward to see the full annular eclipse; I didn't, but I did make a pinhole projector and dragged B outside with me to look at the shadows and the bright crescents. It boggles me somewhat, just how little my friends seemed to care - that to them it was kind of interesting, but not enough to get excited about or go outside to see.
We had at-home experiment kits from the Exploratorium, and dyed flowers by putting foodcoloring in the water, and made gak and Oobleck. The prize box had rocks and compasses. We went to see caves wherever there were caves (much the same as with trains), and did the junior ranger programs, and got up in the middle of the night to drive to somewhere with less light pollution for meteor showers. Dad pointed out how to find satellites in the night sky. Mom pulled out the bird books to identify new birds at the birdfeeder. And lava tubes! How those things are made is super nifty, guys! Basically, world = full of awesome.
Today my dad showed up at my desk at work with binoculars (for projection) and solar-viewing glasses, because the Venus transit is in progress. The binoculars projected an image of the sun a little bigger than a quarter, on one of the desks by the window. We could see the tiny solid dot that is Venus, and a few other little dark splodges that were sunspots (verified as "not just dust on the lens" because when projecting through both lenses of the binoculars, the two images matched). So many cool things going on at once! Projection via lenses, and sunspots, and the silhouette of Venus hanging out right between us and the sun, and catching the last chance in any of our lifetimes to see this.