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Three Awesome Scientific Discoveries From the Solar Eclipse.
My first full solar eclipse was in August 2017. We piled a bunch of people in a van and drove 4 hours to see the eclipse. I thought it would be cool, but it I didn’t realize it was going to be so awesome. Seriously, if you have a chance to catch a total solar eclipse you should do it. Here’s some good information for the 2024 eclipse (in the USA).
But a solar eclipse isn’t just a pretty event in the sky. It also has scientific significance. So, let’s go over some of the interesting scientific discoveries from solar eclipses.
What is a Solar Eclipse?
OK, perhaps I should go over the very fundamental ideas of a solar eclipse. First, let’s start with three important objects: the Sun, the Earth, and the moon. We know that the Earth orbits the Sun and the moon orbits the Earth. So, it’s possible that at some point the moon will pass between the Earth and Sun. That’s a solar eclipse.
With the moon in between the Earth and Sun, there is a shadow from the moon falling on the surface of the Earth. The size of the shadow is smaller than the Earth so that you would only see a total eclipse in a…
