When Oak Forest High School students have a science question, they turn to Oak Forest High School ‘17 Alum, Jonathan Sullivan-Wood.
Therefore, when Oak Forest High School Physics teacher Mr. Hogan’s students had questions about Monday’s eclipse, he asked Purdue physics doctoral student Sullivan-Wood to answer them via Google Meet so the students could listen to his responses and ask questions as they wanted.
Sullivan-Wood explained that an eclipse is when something passes across the sun and causes the shadow of it to cross the earth. In a total eclipse, the sun is blocked out by the moon and one can see the halo of the sun around it, called the penumbra.
Sullivan-Wood and Mr. Hogan emphasized that students should NOT look directly at the sun WHATSOEVER. This is dangerous for your eyes and you need special protection to protect your eyes. OFHS is providing eclipse glasses to all students when we go out to see the eclipse on Monday during 7th hour.
In a total eclipse of the sun, the moon completely darkens the sun because it is closer to the earth. In an annual eclipse of the sun, the moon is farther away and one can see more of the sun around the edges of the moon. This is because the moon circles the earth in an elliptical orbit and sometimes the moon is closer and sometimes it is farther away.
A total eclipse happens more rarely because the moon has to orbit nearer to the earth in order to completely obscure the sun. Typically, anywhere in the world, one can see a total eclipse every 18 months or so, but you have to be willing to travel to it to see it. A total eclipse won’t happen again in the US for 20 years, so this is an exciting thing for us Bengals to see!
On Monday, will we be able to see the eclipse well? Sullivan-Wood said we’re not in the path of totality to see it completely obscure the sun but we will be able to see a lot of it if the weather cooperates! And it did! The weather was beautiful and students enjoyed seeing a good deal of the eclipse that we could see in Oak Forest.