In partnership with the William M. Starkel Planetarium at Parkland College, we organized teacher workshops on the eclipse with ideas for the classroom.

Remember that for Urbana-Champaign, the eclipse will start at 11:53:30 am. It will reach a maximum of 93% blocked by 1:20:37pm. It is all over at 2:44:56pm. The best time to look will be as close to the maximum, since it will be the largest difference.

Below we share the fair-use slides for the presentation:

• Slides, Keynote: We used Keynote to make the slides, so this is the original version.


• Slides, PDF: PDF version of the slides, each page for animation.


• Slides, Powerpoint: Keynote converted version. If there is some issue, email us to fix.

The activities shown at the workshop are listed below. Feel free to use or ask questions (email below) about their use.

• Build a 3D model of the eclipse. This activity helps understand how an eclipse occurs, but also gives size scale references for the Moon/Earth system.


• Build a pinhole camera. An easy activity that allows anyone to view a partial eclipse easily. We recommend using a long wrapping paper tube or a long cereal box. The longer, the bigger the image of the Sun will be. We do not recommend using index cards or paper plates for pinhole camera. Students may be tempted to "look" through them. The other benefit of the pinhole tubes is that they are easy to point. If your students are at a higher level, one can use this to calculate the diameter of the Sun. Sun diameter = (Distance to Sun) * (Diameter of pinhole image) / (distance from pinhole to image).


• Mount Nose-- a model of night and day. A simple, yet informative way to describe the Earth's rotation and the apparent motion of the Sun.


• Understanding the Moon's Phases. Eclipses naturally address the origin of the Moon's phases. We like this lesson.


• Modeling Eclipse with Hula Hoops. The reason that solar eclipses do not occur every month is that there is a 5 deg tilt in the Moon's orbit. This exerise well demonstrate this aspect.


• Changes of the Sun's Brightness during a partial eclipse. An activity to do if you want or need to keep the students outside for a while during the partial eclipse. The Sun's brightness will change as it is eclipsed by the Moon. And you can measure it better than you can see it.


• Watch the Earth Rotate with a sundial. Another activity for longer periods of outside viewing. Set up a Sundial and watch the Earth rotate.


• Schools can watch the total solar eclipse live (or recorded) from multiple sources. The NASA location is https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-live-stream and eventually the full google megamovie will be available https://eclipsemega.movie and will be the FIRST time humans can watch totality over such a long time period. Maybe we will see something we have never seen before!