Community gazes over solar eclipse at KPU’s Richmond campus
The science and horticulture faculty organized the party for the public to experience the astronomical event
KPU's faculty of science and horticulture hosted a solar eclipse viewing party on Oct. 14 at the Richmond campus. (Suneet Gill)
Kwantlen Polytechnic University hosted a solar eclipse viewing party on Oct. 14 at the Richmond campus.
Instructors from the faculty of science and horticulture welcomed the KPU community and public from 8:00 to 10:30 am to watch the annual solar eclipse, where the moon passes between the Earth and sun, outside and on a livestream.
“It was a great opportunity to try to do something to teach young kids, to help them understand science better because sometimes people don’t get a good feel for how big the universe is, and this is a really good way to do it,” says Laura Flinn, event organizer and KPU physics instructor.
Flinn says the original plan was to have the viewing party at the KPU Richmond Farm in Garden City Lands, but it moved to the campus because of the cloudy weather.
While attendees were able to watch most of the solar eclipse through the livestream indoors, the weather cleared up around the last 30 minutes of the event, allowing people to see it a couple of times in between breaks in the clouds.
“When you went outside, and you got a little sneak peek of the eclipse as it happened in real time, [there was] a lot of excitement about that as someone who’s into science,” says Yohani Weheragama, a first-year KPU science student and event volunteer.
“It’s just super cool to see that and see how it moved, both on the screen versus in the actual sky.”
Faculty provided attendees with special glasses to view the solar eclipse safely.
Flinn says that during the last solar eclipse visible in North America, which was a total solar eclipse in 2017, the sun was 90 per cent covered. This time, she says there was about 76 per cent coverage.
Besides the solar eclipse, attendees had the chance to look at a telescope and two Sunspotters, which are devices used to view the sun, eclipses, and transits.
There was also a model walking tour of the solar system across the main building atrium, which featured posters with information on the different planets that were distanced apart from each other to scale their placement in space.
The event also featured a robot with a foam ball attached to it, representing the moon, that rotated around a model of the Earth, demonstrating how a solar eclipse works. Next to the display was another robot that students in a first-year engineering class built to run continuously.
Sustainable agriculture instructor Michael Bomford also gave a presentation about the idea of growing food in space.
Children also had a chance to interact at the event by creating solar eclipse art and making a CD spectroscope, a device that breaks light into a spectrum of lines and colours.
Attendees also had the chance to use provided spectroscopes to see lights emitted from different sources to understand how scientists study the elements in stars.They were also able to see water bears, which are tiny animals, under a microscope and learn about how European scientists sent them to space in 2007.
Flinn says planning for the event began in March or April after she proposed the idea. From there, different departments discussed, coordinated, and planned activities about space that would interest and be accessible to young children.
Beyond science, Flinn hopes attendees learned more about KPU and what it has to offer.
Flinn says she is planning another event at the Richmond campus for viewing a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.
“They’ve looked at the institution, they’ve seen instructors here, how they are, and I hope they realize that their kids can come here and learn just as well as any other of the more well-established universities,” she says.
