How to safely enjoy the upcoming total solar eclipse

This April 8, many parts of Texas, which includes the Science Mill in Johnson City, will bear witness to the total solar eclipse. This rare celestial event promises a breathtaking display of nature’s wonders as the moon temporarily obscures the sun, casting a mesmerizing shadow over the Lone Star State.

As we anticipate this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, it’s important to remember that observing a solar eclipse requires caution and preparation to ensure a safe and memorable experience for all. Here are some essential safety reminders to keep in mind as you gear up for this extraordinary event.

PROTECT YOUR EYES

Perhaps the most vital safety precaution during a solar eclipse is safeguarding your eyes from the intense solar radiation. NEVER look at the sun directly, even during the eclipse! Doing so can cause severe and permanent damage to your vision. It's imperative to use proper eye protection such as solar viewing glasses or handheld solar viewers with certified filters. These specialized lenses are designed to block harmful ultraviolet, visible, and infrared radiation while allowing you to observe the eclipse safely.

Beware of Counterfeit Glasses

With the heightened demand for solar viewing glasses during an eclipse, counterfeit products may flood the market. To ensure your eye safety, only use glasses that meet the international safety standards (ISO 12312-2) for solar filters. Check for reputable vendors and certifications to guarantee the authenticity of your viewing equipment. Remember, compromising on the quality of your eye protection is never worth the risk.

ISO-certified solar viewing glasses available at the Science Mill Science Store!

Supervise Children and Pets

Children and pets may be particularly curious about the eclipse. However, they are also more susceptible to eye damage from improper viewing. Always supervise young ones and furry friends, ensuring they wear appropriate eye protection at all times. Explain the importance of eclipse safety to children in simple terms, emphasizing the danger of looking directly at the sun without proper gear.

Avoid DIY Solutions

While it may be tempting to improvise with makeshift viewing methods, such as sunglasses, smoked glass, or unfiltered cameras, these alternatives provide inadequate protection against solar radiation. DIY solutions can fail to block harmful rays, putting your eyes at risk of injury. Stick to approved solar viewing glasses or viewers from reliable sources to guarantee your safety and enjoyment during the eclipse.

Use Indirect Viewing Methods

If you're unable to obtain certified solar viewing glasses, don't fret. There are plenty of indirect viewing methods that allow you to experience the eclipse safely. Create a pinhole projector using cardboard or paper to project the image of the partially eclipsed sun onto a surface. You can also use a telescope or binoculars to project the sun's image onto a piece of white paper. These methods offer a captivating way to observe the eclipse without direct eye exposure.

Protect Cameras and Equipment

If you're planning to capture the eclipse through photography or videography, ensure your camera equipment is equipped with solar filters. Without proper filtration, the intense sunlight can damage camera sensors and lenses, rendering them unusable. Additionally, never look through a camera viewfinder or optical device without appropriate eye protection.

Stay Hydrated, Sun-Safe, and prepared!

Total eclipses can draw large crowds, especially in prime viewing locations. Be prepared for potential heat and sun exposure by staying hydrated, wearing sunscreen, and seeking shade when necessary. Plan ahead by bringing plenty of water, sunscreen with a high SPF, hats, and lightweight clothing to shield yourself from the sun's rays. Prioritize your health and comfort to fully enjoy the eclipse experience.

Be Mindful of Traffic and Crowds

As eclipse enthusiasts converge on viewing sites across Texas, anticipate increased traffic and crowds in popular areas. Plan your transportation and accommodations in advance to avoid last-minute hassles. Consider packing some extra food and water in case you get stuck in traffic for a long time. Practice patience and courtesy on the roads, and follow any instructions from law enforcement or event organizers to ensure a smooth and safe experience for everyone.

embrace THE EXPERIENCE

Above all, remember to savor the magic of the total eclipse. It's a rare and awe-inspiring event that is best enjoyed with friends, family, and your community.

If you haven’t found a great viewing spot, come join us for Solar Spectacle at the Science Mill! Day passes include admission for 4, 4 eclipse glasses, and a reserved parking slot. Plus, you can commemorate your experience with some great eclipse souvenirs — luckily, the Science Mill has some great ones to help you remember this moment!

To ensure guests’ comfort and safety, slots are LIMITED — so make sure to get your tickets now!

2024 eclipse poster, tote bag, notebook, magnet, and sticker available at the Science Mill Science Store

How to support women in STEM

“Without the participation of women, we have only half the brain power, half the spirit, and ultimately, half the potential.” [source]

As a company founded by a female STEM entrepreneur, the Science Mill has a unique perspective on Women in STEM.  She founded and served as CEO for two successful biotech ventures which she led before brokering sales to large public companies. She has been awarded many accolades and awards for her work in STEM Education and her entrepreneurial efforts including the Entrepreneur of the Year/Minnesota and Dakota” award, Houston’s award for Outstanding Women in Science 2018, and the John Covert Watson Award for Vision 2017.

Our founder and President of the Board Dr. Bonnie Baskin is a force for STEM education. Ingrained into the mission and vision of the Mill is not just that we spark interest in STEM careers but also help women and girls grow their STEM identities. Dr. Baskin is a career virologist and biotech entrepreneur. She has also been the topic of many chapters in entrepreneurial books. She purposefully integrated a focus on building STEM-efficacy in girls into all of our programs and showing them that diversity in STEM fields is needed now more than ever.

“If you don’t look like everyone in the room, you belong there even more.” [source]

- LaDoris Harris, director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity in the U.S. Department of Energy

From our earliest beginnings more than 9 years ago, Dr. Baskin encouraged and built deep partnerships with multiple female STEM leaders including the incomparable Tricia Berry, the Executive Director of Women in STEM (WiSTEM) at The University of Texas at Austin. Tricia is a nationally recognized leader in STEM Education with over 25 years of experience, she also works in STEM Workforce Development, Effective STEM Messaging and Engagement, Strategies to Engage Girls/Women in STEM, STEM Role Model Effective Strategies, Informal STEM Curriculum Development and Facilitation, Engaging Volunteers and Role Models, and Leadership and Career Development. In our first conversations with Tricia she helped us to understand how to “talk” to girls in our program offerings, how to raise the STEM identities, how to approach marketing and training our programs so that we could better attract young women and help guide them into the STEM leaders of tomorrow. During the development of our virtual Professional Development series, we were fortunate to partner with Mrs. Berry once again and provide an entire section around Women in STEM and engaging females in STEM learning. During the module we broke down PBS’s SCIGirls approach to engaging girls in STEM along with statistics and resources from Tricia’s influential work with the National Girls Collaborative Project.

Watch more of our interview with Tricia Berry here:

“Between the years of 1966 and 1977, over 5,000 drawings of scientists made by girls were collected. Only 28 (0.56%) of them depicted female scientists. She states that over 80 similar studies with more than 20,000 participants were conducted since then. And by 2016, a whopping 58% of scientists drawn by girls were females. This gives us hope that by ushering in a growth mindset and an open, experimental atmosphere, educators can create a safe place for girls to explore all facets of STEM from an early age, allowing more space and time for growth.” [source]

By the Numbers - Statistics 

“Girls/young women and boys/young men do not significantly differ in their abilities in mathematics and science, but do differ in their interest, confidence, and sense of belonging in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).” [source] NGCP produces a State of Girls and Women in STEM annually every March. In comparison of 2023 and 2024 numbers there is a 1% growth in Women in the STEM workforce. 

[Source]

Strategies to Engage Girls in STEM

“If we, as teachers, can encourage girls to take those difficult classes and support and celebrate their efforts rather than their outcomes, this will go a long way toward encouraging them to stay in those classes.” [source]

SciGirls Strategies outline a 6 step, research based approach to engaging girls in STEM and helping them have confidence in their abilities. 

1. Connect STEM Experiences to Girl’s Lives
   Approach STEM learning from a culturally responsive perspective and engage girls through their personal experiences, culture, knowledge, skills and personal interests. Encourage them to pursue content that has real world relevance for them. Embrace new opportunities to connect girls to STEM learning with community organizations like WiSTEM and Women in STEM (WiSTEM) ambassadors, Use international events such as the International Women and Girls in Science Day to connect with stories of women in these fields that could help you connect with your students. Use valuable free resources like PBS’s Inspire a Generation of Innovators on Women & Girls in Science Day! — Mountain Lake PBS to a ensure a multimodal learning experience for young women and incorporate “edventures” form an early age!

2. Support Girls as they use STEM practices
   Connect with us at the Science Mill to incorporate any of our hands-on, inquiry-driven off-site STEM programs such as Summer Camps, Afterschool STEM Discovery Clubs, or Labs on the Go. If you’re within range, visit us for field trips and add on a learning lab. Get tools in their hands that allow them to gain experience in “doing” science that help build strong STEM identities and self-efficacy. Whether at home or in the classroom, engage with online STEM activities with DIY STEM activities designed for girls | The GiST.

3. Empower Girls to embrace struggles
   We now know that the difference in representation of men versus women in STEM fields is not due to lack of achievement or skill in math or science but rather a lack of confidence in their own abilities. In order to overcome challenges, women and girls must embrace failure as a learning experience and not a lack of skill. One political leader chose to embrace this topic, as she encourages us all as parents and educators to teach our girls to be brave, not perfect. In her impactful TED talk, Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection, Reshma Saujani, discusses how to leverage failure as an opportunity to preserve thus changing the narrative for young women everywhere by encouraging them to have moxy to go against a social construct wherein successful women must be “perfect” at what they do and not fail. Supporting young women to have a growth mindset around the opportunities presented through failure will help reshape aspirations and knock down barriers to those more in-depth science, technology and math courses.

4. Encourage Girls to challenge STEM stereotypes
   Use tools to unleash the social justice warriors in young women by introducing them to lessons, texts, tasks and strategies from organizations like Learning for Justice. Represent the women on the frontiers of emerging, collaborative STEM projects and missions such as NASA’s Women of Artemis. Allow them to hear from the unsung women heroes of scientific discovery with projects like The Untold History of Women in Science and Technology | The White House. By incorporating these brave women and their accomplishments, we can help them rise to the occasion and break barriers for those who will follow in their footsteps. 

5. Emphasize the STEM is collaborative, social and community-oriented
   The large statistical representation of women in the social sciences and life sciences are not really shocking given the natural inclination and societal norms of women being caretakers. This strategy aims to increase the interest and motivation in becoming STEM professionals and change the “stereotypical perception that STEM jobs require people to work alone.” (from video) “Because fewer women study and work in STEM, these fields tend to perpetuate inflexible, exclusionary, male-dominated cultures that are not supportive of or attractive to women and minorities.” [source]

6. Interact with Diverse Role Models
   Representation matters. Having posters of STEM women from reputable sources like the St. Louis Science Center and incorporating Role Model Profiles from SciGirls into your curriculum can also boost their confidence and interest in STEM content by allowing them to “see” themselves in STEM.  

As we close out this post, let’s take a pause to reflect on the resources, partners, and strategies at your disposal to help inspire the next generation of Women in STEM. How will you build a better future for them? 

Eclipse Quest: A Mobile Eclipse Education Program

This April 8, 2024, many parts of the continental United States will experience a rare, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon: a total solar eclipse — and the Science Mill in Johnson City, Texas is right in the path of totality! This means that the moon will completely block out the sun for almost 4 minutes.

To help rural students living in the eclipse path better understand the significance of the eclipse, the Science Mill, with the support of the Simons Foundation, created the Eclipse Quest, a mobile eclipse education program. This mobile program, delivered to key rural communities in central Texas, is a gamified, educational experience that walks students through different aspects of the solar eclipse, including its causes, effects, and cultural significance. From assembling their own solar viewing devices to exploring the properties of light and shadow, students will gain a deep understanding of the science behind this incredible celestial event.

STEM Education Specialists Shelby, Angelica, and Aileen with an Eclipse Quest table

Eclipse Quest is designed to maximize student interaction by providing each team of students with access to the four interactive components enhanced by a digital gamified experience that helps the team navigate the activity. As each one of the four activities are completed, it unlocks the code to the next activity. Some questions that get explored include:

• Why do eclipses happen so infrequently?

• What causes an eclipse?

• Who in history was first to make sense of the Earth-moon-sun relationship?

These and other questions are explored as teams of students examine clues, solve mathematical problems, and use critical thinking to complete all stages and unlock the mystery of our solar system!

For continued learning and engagement, each participating student also receives a take-home kit that contains an informative activity booklet and a pair of eclipse glasses. They also get the Science Mill’s unique build-your-own cardboard orrery kits that illustrate how the Sun, Moon, and Earth move to create eclipses.

Excited to learn more about the eclipse? Come watch the eclipse with us on April 8!

Aside from a great view, there will be special eclipse-themed floor activities to enhance your experience. Each eclipse day pass includes admission for 4, 4 pairs of eclipse glasses, and a reserved parking slot in our west parking lot. Limited slots only! No walk-ins will be allowed. See you there!

What is the Engineering Design Process?

What do a rollercoaster, artificial heart valves, and the Dragonfly rotorcraft have in common?

They’re all feats of engineering that used the same creative process to solve problems! This process, called the Engineering Design Process, is a problem-solving approach used by real engineers that anyone can learn and use in their lives.

Dragonfly is a rotorcraft that has been specially designed by NASA for flight on one of Saturn’s moons, Titan. The Dragonfly mission is a part of NASA’s search for habitable planets and moons within our solar system.

What is the Engineering Design Process?

At its core, the Engineering Design Process is creative and follows these steps:

• Ask what problem you are trying to solve or what you are trying to create.

  • Imagineers at Disney World have meetings with peers to work out what they can do to create a brand-new roller coaster that is safer and more fun!

• Imagine possible solutions to the problem.

  • During their meetings, they look at what people liked about past roller coasters while also thinking about ideas that haven’t been used yet.

• Plan and design your solution.

  • The Imagineers decide which ideas to use in their design and create drawings or computer aided design (CAD) models.

• Create a prototype, a model meant for testing your design, of that idea.

  • A team of Imagineers and workers build the prototype of their roller coaster. Before building a full-size model, it is common for people to build their designs on a smaller scale.

• Test the prototype. How did it perform?

  • Imagineers test their roller coaster with crash test dummies or mannequins several times so that they can be certain that their ride is safe for people to enjoy.

• Improve the prototype based on the results of testing.

  • Did a critical part of the design break? Did a safe roller coaster fail to “wow” the riders? Different types of feedback are taken as points to improve upon.

• Return to steps 2 and 3. Repeat the process until you have refined your solution and it is ready to be shared with others!

How do real engineers use the Engineering Design Process?

All engineers use their own version of the process to accomplish their goals and solve problems within their unique fields. Often your first prototype isn’t able to solve the problem that you need to solve, so you return to steps 2 and 3 to refine your ideas and make progress on the solution to your identified problem.

Here’s a real-life example! Justice Darby is a mechanical engineering student at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Once he graduates, his goal is to work for NASA at Marshall Spaceflight Center working in the field of theoretical propulsion systems that will benefit space missions, especially those supporting a manned mission to Mars. He is active in the University of Alaska’s rocketry club, which is designing a liquid rocket engine. While designing the club’s rocket engine from scratch, everyone has been exploring solutions and planning how to apply them to the prototype. As students, they are using this project to fill gaps in their knowledge and prepare for careers in aerospace!

So far, Justice and his peers have created and tested one prototype of the combustion chamber. The results from the test helped them make improvements, such as what the best placement for the fuel and other combustible materials would be. Making improvements requires that they return to step 2, imagine, to explore solutions to newly identified points for improvement. They perform this process until the team is satisfied that their objective has been achieved.

This is an early model of the combustion chamber that Justice worked on. Engineers often draw their ideas or create them in computer aided design (CAD) softwares before building them.

I’m interested in engineering, what skills do I need to become an engineer?

According to the engineers that were asked, there are three skills vital to engineering.

The first skill is working with the mindset that challenges are the beginning of improvement. Challenges do not mark the end of an idea that you have.

Building from that, engineers need to be able to learn from their mistakes. If your prototype did not meet the needs of your project, you can still learn from what did and didn’t happen during your testing and use that to improve your next attempt.

Finally, engineers need to know how to work with others. Engineers rarely work alone, and they face all of the challenges that come with the group projects that are more commonly associated with other careers!

Some other important skills include learning how to prioritize needs and wants within the scope of your project, learning how to sell your ideas to those with the ability to grant you additional resources, and learning how to put a project down when you’ve been working on it for a long time and haven’t been able to come to a solution. It will still be there after you take a break!

How do I get started?

Now that you know what the engineering design process is, think back to a time you tried to fix a problem or make something better. Maybe you had a toy you wanted to make more fun, or a chore you wanted to make easier.

Now, try it again and think about something in your life that could be made better. Start by making a plan, then think about what you want to change and how you want to do it. Then, try your plan on a small scale and see how it goes. Take note of what works and what doesn’t. Maybe you’ll need to make changes along the way–and that’s okay! That’s the process.

When you’ve fixed the problem or made things better, you’ve done what engineers do!

Excited to learn more about engineering? Join us for Engineering Weekend from February 17-19. There will be tons of exciting hands-on activities designed to unleash the inner inventor in you!