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‘Payday’ for Cedar Rapids science teacher as students watch solar eclipse
Thousands turn out at UI Pentacrest to watch the partial eclipse
Apr. 8, 2024 5:41 pm, Updated: Apr. 9, 2024 7:25 am
It was “payday” for Taft Middle School science teacher Steve Koepke as he watched his students’ excitement while they observed the moon pass over the sun Monday during the solar eclipse.
“You say something is going to happen and you can explain it, but it’s nothing like experiencing it,” Koepke said. “It’s an event they really will get once in their lifetime. While it happens often, it doesn’t happen often where you are on planet earth.”
As the sky became hazy Monday a little before 2 p.m. and the air cooled, more than 500 students at Taft Middle School made their way outside — eclipse glasses in hand — to view the partial eclipse that passed over Iowa.
A total solar eclipse made its way across parts of the United States, but in Iowa it was a partial eclipse, with the moon covering about 83 percent of the sun. At the urging of science teachers, the school purchased 700 eclipse glasses for all 570 students and about 100 staff to view the rare phenomenon.
Some students spread blankets on the school lawn. Emily Morris, 13, an eighth-grader at Taft, said it was “pretty cool.” She didn’t expect to see so much of the sun covered by the moon.
Taft Principal Gary Hatfield said he recalls watching an eclipse in 1979 with his elementary school class in Cedar Rapids. “I remember it to this day. It made an impact on me back then. Hopefully, these kids have that same type of memory,” he said.
On Friday, science teacher Jill Anderson gave a lesson about solar eclipses to her seventh grade class, stressing the importance of wearing the eclipse glasses and to not take pictures of the eclipse with their cellphones because it can damage the phone’s sensor.
“This is not a day to worry about your fashion sense. This is a day to protect your eyes,” Anderson said.
Anderson recalled the last time she got to see a partial eclipse in 1996 when she was a student at Jefferson High School. She made an eclipse viewer with a cereal box, cardboard, foil, paper, scissors, tape and glue.
The do-it-yourself eclipse viewer, held with a pinhole facing the sun, protects the eyes by allowing the person to see a shadow of the eclipse.
To teach about the eclipse when students can see it occurring in real time takes learning out of the classroom and brings it to life, Anderson said.
During the last partial eclipse to cross over Iowa, on Aug. 21, 2017, students were still out of school for the summer.
Keelan Jordan, 12, a seventh-grader at Taft, recalled viewing the eclipse in 2017 when he was 5 years old. He also made an eclipse viewer out of a cereal box with his mom.
“It’s cool — a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Jordan said.
Anderson said while Iowa will see other partial eclipses, being in the 85 percent partial eclipse range won’t happen for another 375 years.
‘Supposed to be in class’
Not that University of Iowa students needed much prodding to skip class or pause their studies to step outside on one of the first warmish school days of the semester, but the thousands who crowded the Pentacrest for Monday’s solar eclipse still was impressive.
Necks craned with paper-constructed viewing glasses perched precariously on the bridge of their noses, backpack-laden gazers refused to take their eyes off the evolving celestial event — even if it meant minor collisions and slight stumbles on and off the paved walkways surrounding the Old Capitol.
“I’m supposed to be in class,” UI sophomore Mia Hasan, 20, said with a slight shrug. “Although I did see my teacher outside too.”
Hasan’s friend, UI sophomore Clare Malloy, 20, said her rhetoric class took a “field trip” to experience what was billed as a majority solar eclipse from their vantage point on the UI campus — with the moon eclipsing about 89 percent of the sun at its peak just after 2 p.m. That was more impressive than the last eclipse-watching opportunity in 2017, when clouds blocked much of the view in Iowa City.
“I had a free absence,” Hasan said. “So I was like, ‘I'm gonna take it while I can, because I didn't see the last one’.”
The UI campus viewing party was far from students only. Faculty and staff emerged from offices, toddlers tagged along behind parents, and retired Iowa Citians unfolded lawn chairs — spreading information they’d gleaned about when peak moon coverage would occur.
So when, right at 2:01 p.m., the crowd burst into applause, 69-year-old Joe Artz was tickled.
“We commented here that that round of applause that went up was awesome,” he said.
Among the most popular attractions at the Pentacrest viewing — aside from the sun and its concealing moon — was UI physics and astronomy professor Gregory Howes, who brought his refractor telescope, allowing those on hand to sneak an up close peak at the celestial anomaly.
“Look at this,” Howes said, pointing not at the sky but at those gathered around him. “I can’t be more delighted. Thousands of people are out here.”
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