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science, health & technologyAlso in this section:
Palm Beach Community College communication prof Lori Crane, who is also an amateur astronomy buff, explains the relationships among the sun, moon and earth to an audience primarily composed of sixth graders Public schools get outside help for a science lesson photos and story by Eric Jackson Carlos Campos Marín, a 19-year veteran educator who graduated from the Escuela Normal J. D. Arosemena and teaches sixth grade at the El Platanal primary school, taught his 1998 class about that year's solar eclipse. Then, however, he could only tell his students about the science involved. There was no opportunity for a special activity related to that impressive celestial event. On April 7 of this year, however --- a day before the unusual annular solar eclipse --- he took his kids on a field trip to XS Memories, a Santa Clara establishment that's part restaurant, part RV park, part motel and part bar, to meet with members of the Panamanian Amateur Astronomers' Association, several of them faculty members at Panama's universities, and a group from Florida's Palm Beach Community College to learn about eclipses and safe ways to look at them; the proportions, positions and movements of the sun, moon and earth; the nature of the star around which our planet orbits; and some of the tools and techniques used in astronomy. Also attending the luncheon and science lesson were several other schoolteachers, a class from Rio Hato and a Panamanian-American couple and their young son.
Campos (left) and his class consider one of the math problems presented by the April 8 solar eclipse The school in El Platanal, like most of the Interior's public schools, lacks many resources. There is no computer there. Nor is there a telescope, nor much in the way of audiovisual equipment. (Contributions are welcome, so if you can spare a computer, telescope or other equipment useful for the teaching of elementary school students, call (507) 987-2327 to arrange your donation, or talk to Dennis at XS.) "Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by what's happening in the sky," Palm Beach Community College professor Lori Crane noted. "In 3000 BC they built Stonehenge to learn what was happening in the sky. Today we are still trying to learn about the sun."
With cardboard cutouts and a piece of string, students are shown the relative size and distance of the sun and the earth Professor Juan Samaniego, who teaches electrical engineering at the Panama Technological University's Cocle branch, continued with some assistance with the math lesson. (Hmmmm --- which number gets divided by which?) The different kinds of eclipses were noted. Crane described how to make a simple pinhole camera and a schoolgirl from Rio Hato noted that a glass of water can also be used to safely if indirectly view the sun.
Mr. Torres from the Asociación Panameña de Astrónomos Aficionados (APAA, whose website is at http://www.astropanama.org and which meets at 8 p.m. on Thursday nights at the Universidad Tecnológico de Panamá branch on Tumba Muerto) talks astronomy with some of the more advanced students and teachers This was not a day off from school. The educators had prepared lesson plans, and the kids spent part of the session with pencils and papers doing battle with eclipse-based brain teasers. A few of them caught on more quickly, and more readily grasped the subtleties involved. Ah, but what's an elementary school day without show and tell time? Some of the assembled astronomy buffs had their cool telescopes to show, and neither the kids nor most of the teachers had seen such instruments before.
On this day the kids got to look at and play with the grown-ups' rather expensive and delicate toys...
...but they let the adults play with the telescopes too. The following day's eclipse was at its fullest in a small strip of land whose center ran through Penonome. The local airport there was closed to accommodate the hundreds of astronomy fans from around the world who descended upon Panama for the event. The weather was less cooperative, however, so that the best views came came those who observed from aircraft flying above the clouds.
Although the capital was south of the path in which the eclipse could be seen in its full glory, and even though the clouds moved in at the height of the celestial spectacular, Panama City residents did get an opportunity to see this event and this reporter's neighbors were eager to borrow the filter that the visitors from Palm Beach gave him so that they, too, could safely watch. This was an annular eclipse, in which the moon completely crossed the sun's path but because of its distance from the earth left a ring of fire in the sky rather than a few moments of total darkness as happens during other total eclipses. It will be 25 years before Panama sees another solar eclipse.
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