The last total eclipse was watched by a lot of kids

The impact seeing the eclipse eclipse on a young student: Kepler Colwell’s father, Landon Davis, and Evelyn Davis’s sister

People who chase total solar eclipses all over the world will tell you that seeing the moon eclipse the sun is a profound, unforgettable experience.

A few years ago, Kepler Colwell saw the eclipse at his family’s home in Tennessee. He says it isn’t a “super-clear memory” but a pretty decent one. I remember it pretty well.”

Rick Fienberg is the project manager for the American Astronomical Society’s eclipse task force and has encountered a lot of people who are profoundly affected by the eclipse.

Fienberg says they’ve heard their stories over a cup of coffee. “And many of them have said, ‘Yeah, it changed my life. It has turned me into an eclipse chaser,’ or ‘It’s caused me to read endless astronomy books or to pay more attention to science news.'”

But that’s just anecdotal, he says. He’s not aware of any data showing whether or not an eclipse can, say, boost the number of young people going into science careers — much less any studies attempting to quantify the ineffable emotional impact of seeing the sun blacked out.

As for the students, it was the small details that stuck out, like biting the moon pies into the shape of partial eclipse phases, or being able to look through the big telescopes set up by an astronomy club.

One of the students who attended Buckner’s eclipse-observing event is Kaylee Tress, who is now an 8th-grader at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge.

Landon Davis was five years old when the eclipse happened, and remembers being on the playground and using eclipse glasses before the big event. He says that he doesn’t remember much.

Evelyn was asked to check with her older sister. “Weren’t we with our neighbors?” she asked in an uncertain manner. Her sister confirmed that yes, they’d gone to a blueberry farm with some neighbors.

Seeing eclipses: a childhood memory of Laura Peticolas and her father, Chase Stanek, and her mother, Laurence Breiwa

His brother also remembers wearing eclipse glasses. “But I also remember hearing crickets, like at its peak of darkness I heard crickets as well,” he says.

She has no recollection of seeing the sun as it was black in the sky but she did remember wearing a welder’s helmet to protect her from harmful rays.

Chase Stanek, who is now a junior in high school in Wisconsin, says that even though the event was super-memorable and fun, “I wouldn’t say it changed my life path or any of that.”

The effects could be subtle. Laura Peticolas was nine years old when her family went to see a total solar eclipse. She vividly remembers how her dad played Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon when she was a child.

He’s become interested in meteorology — before the eclipse, he’d already been paying attention to the dynamic power of storms — and says it’s possible that the eclipse, with its effects on temperature and the environment, might have influenced that growing fascination.

It is not something you see every day. So it just kind of brought the perspective of like there’s more out there than you see every day, every year, you know?” says Breiwa. “It just kind of broadened the horizons and perspectives on literally everything.”

According to the teacher who organized the eclipse field trip, young people are more likely to be influenced by an eclipse than older people.

She decided to become a physicist. So even though her childhood self wouldn’t have described seeing the eclipse as a transformative event, she suspects it had some kind of impact on the course of her life.