PERC 2025 Abstract Detail Page
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| Abstract Title: | The Moon Bites The Sun: Learners’ explorations with Mesoamerican Mirrors, Sunlight, and Solar Eclipse |
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| Abstract Type: | Contributed Poster Presentation |
| Abstract: | How do today's learners discover the Sun directly, its energy, changes and light, and relate to peoples who experienced it as Earth's lamp of day? This poster relates from experiences of MIT students and community members while interacting with the Sun, history, and April 8 2024 solar eclipse. For ancient Mesoamericans, Sun was deity. When eclipsed, people feared. Mesoamerican mirrors were crafted from stone with immense labor. Viewing these mirrors at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography immerses students in objects' past. Outdoors, students explore with glass mirrors, lenses, Sunlight. These explorations are open-ended, unconstrained by answers. April 8, 2024 brings solar eclipse from Mexico to Canada. We report impromptu and facilitated experiences in and out of totality, by instrumental methods ranging from hole projection to filters to telescopic imaging. For everyone – children, MIT students, public, amateurs – the Moon biting the Sun is as awesome as for ancient Mesoamericans. |
| Session Time: | Poster Session C |
| Poster Number: | C-129 |
Author/Organizer Information | |
| Primary Contact: |
Elizabeth Cavicchi MIT Edgerton Center Woburn, MA 01801 Phone: 7813534673 |
| Co-Author(s) and Co-Presenter(s) |
Isis María Cota-Martínez, Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados S.C. (CIMAV), Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico Marvelin Higginbottom, MIT Edgerton Center, MIT. 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 02139 Parimala Rajesh, Undergraduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Giorgio Stevens, Amigos School Cambridge |
