- Hi, I am Parris and with the eclipse
just a few days away now, I've been hearing these wild
stories about on Ebay and Amazon people charging hundreds
of dollars for a simple pair of paper eclipse glasses.
The reason is a lot of places are just sold out,
they don't have anymore.
So, if you haven't gone and gotten these glasses yet,
you may be out of luck, doesn't mean though
that you have to miss observing the eclipse.
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The sure fire, safe way to observe the eclipse
is to not use glasses because you're not
going to look at the sun.
They probably taught you this in elementary school,
where you make a little viewer.
All you need is a couple pieces of paper or cardboard,
punch a little hole, go out in the sun and line them up
and you'll be able to observe the eclipse at less than
hundreds of dollars for a pair of these glasses,
just with two pieces of paper and a little pin hole.
So, I'll show you how this works, it's so easy to do.
I'm also going to try to do it on a larger scale
with some poster board I have to put in the window here,
a mirror, and I'm gonna try to project the image of the sun
on the wall behind me about six feet across.
So, if you missed out on getting eclipse glasses
or even if you have some but you're not 100% sure
you trust them and want to stare at the sun using them,
I'll show you the safe way to watch it.
Because you definitely do want to observe it,
it may be a once in a lifetime event.
But, your eyes have to last you the rest of your lifetime.
As I mentioned, it's as easy as two pieces of paper.
The one you're going to be projecting image onto
should be white, it'll be the easiest to see that way.
The other one doesn't really matter the color.
And you're going to poke a small hole in it.
Now, using a pin is okay but that might be
a little bit too small of a hole.
Safety pin size is probably better, a small all,
if you're out of those items, the point of a ballpoint pin,
the little end of a Phillips type screwdriver.
Just get a small hole and try to
make it as round as you can.
Hey, good on the first go there, okay.
So, that was the hard part but the tricky part
is lining things up with the sun
and trying to get the shadow of this paper
to fall on the one where you project the image
so you can actually see something.
Probably easier if I show you outside.
You have the paper with the hole
and the paper we're gonna project on to
and the sun up in the sky.
So, right there, you should be able to see.
Believe it or not, that is the image of the sun.
Now, as we move the top paper further up,
that will become larger but also fainter.
Now, I know you're thinking, yeah, it's just a dot of light,
but no, actually that is the projection of the sun.
If there were large sun spots you
can actually see them this way.
And during the eclipse, you will see the moon
covering different parts of the sun
depending where you're located
and what part of the eclipse you get to see.
If you're in the path of totality, of course,
this would turn completely black.
Pretty easy, right?
Now, to improve viewing there,
you want to have the area where you're projecting
the image of the sun as dark as possible.
So, if you can do it into the shade or something,
that would be better.
If you could do it into a room...
Now, I'm gonna do a little experiment here
involving a mirror and having one of my kids
stand out in the yard in the sun
and catch some sunlight and send it in through the window
that's right behind the camera there.
I have some black poster board, here,
to help darken up the window below the shade
and I'm gonna poke a hole though it.
And I'm thinking the room will be very dark.
And with the distance, remember the distance from the paper
with the hole to where you're projecting it,
it gets larger so I'm thinking the 10 feet
from that window to here,
I should get a pretty big image of the sun.
Here's my set up as viewed from inside the room.
You can see the hole there, near the top.
And yeah, the windows were a little wider
than the poster board.
And here's the wall where I plan
to project the image of the sun.
Here's the view from the outside
and I am out in the yard with the mirror.
Come on, Roxanna.
- [Roxanna] You almost got me in the face.
- [Parris] I won't shine it on ya.
And the light will shine, if I can get it steady here,
through that hole and then I'll go see
what we got on the inside of the room.
Hopefully, it's an image of the sun on the far wall.
You ready to take over, Roxanna?
- [Roxanna] Mmm-hmm.
- I would think it would be much larger.
I wonder why it's not.
Because over there, hmmm.
Did I make the hole too large, maybe that's the problem.
Well, Roxanna and I tried it with
numerous holes and it doesn't work.
It works in reverse of what I was anticipating.
The further away I go, it seems the smaller
the image of the sun appeared on the wall.
It was only about the size of a quarter or so
and I was expecting this big image.
But we went online and researched it
and now I'm still not sure why things weren't behaving
the same way as this where when you move the hole
further away from the screen it gets bigger.
Yeah, I wasn't moving the hole was I,
I was moving the light source.
Anyway, I'm not sure why that didn't work.
I'll think about it more later
but I found a cool way that is guaranteed to work,
at least if you believe everything you see online.
I'm going to take me cardboard here, the poster board,
and I'm going to cut out this section
the right size to cover up the mirror,
leaving just a small hole.
Actually, I think this hole might be a little bit too small.
From what I've read, I'll just need a small opening in it
and basically I'm doing the pin hole effect
at the mirror itself.
And so, it will take that solar image,
bounce it across the street,
through the window, into the darkened room,
and give me a fair sized image on the wall.
Here's what I've got and I noticed on the wall now,
I've got this band, let's hope that an image
of the sun appears right there.
That is harder to see but maybe it'll be
the right shape when it gets inside.
How's it looking, Roxanna?
- [Roxanna] It's definitely bigger than last time.
- Four times bigger.
Okay, I'm gonna go across the street and see what I can do.
Alright, some more design modifications.
Had to make the whole in that card a little bit larger
and we had to find just the right distance
to go out in the yard to get this to work.
I got it to work, Roxanna reported,
so now she's going to try and we're gonna see.
Okay, we have made some progress.
We have a little bit of a double image going on.
Maybe there's cloud passing, yeah,
I think there's some clouds passing in front.
But, the double image, I think,
is because the card isn't flat against the mirror.
But still, this is pretty good
and it's a lot bigger than it was
on the little piece of white paper, if not quite as steady.
Well, that turned into quite a project.
It had Roxanna and I online researching things
and experimenting, trying different styles with the holes,
different distances and so forth.
I think we learned some stuff and we learned
we need to go read some more.
If you decide to go with the card on the mirror
and the little hole and shine that
into a darkened room so several people can watch
and have a really nice image of it,
practice before the day of the eclipse.
It takes some time to figure out
all the variables with this, otherwise,
good enough for fifth graders, good enough for 50 year olds.
Punch a hole in a piece of paper and shine it
and you'll get to watch it there.
Of course, it'll be streamed live.
I think one of the TV networks is doing
a two hour special during the whole thing.
So, it's nice to see it that way but I don't feel like
I've really seen it if I watch it on TV.
There are total solar eclipses every year
to somewhere in the world and I can watch them on TV.
I wanna see what's really going on right where I am.
Thank you for sticking with me
through all the experimentation.
In return, I would like to do a giveaway.
No, it's not eclipse glasses.
By the time you get them, be too late.
It's a set of stamps that has been issued
by the post office here in the United States
in commemoration of the total eclipse
and they do something so cool.
On the back of the sheet of stamps,
you can see the path of totality of the eclipse
and these are the stamps.
Now, they're pretty cool looking, right?
You can see the moon blocking out
the sun with a corona around it.
Well, these are the first time the post office
has ever made thermo-chromatic stamps.
Thermo as in heat, as in you warm them up.
I'm gonna put my thumb here behind this top stamp
and what happens is the heat takes away the black covering
and you can actually see the details of the moon underneath.
And when you take the heat away and it cools back down,
goes back to being all black, changes back and forth
any number of times, coolest stamps ever.
If you'd like a chance to win one of these sets of stamps,
comment down below this video.,
something, anything eclipse related.
And after the eclipse on Monday,
August 21st, 2017, I'll pick one commenter,
get in touch with you and send you out
a sheet of these super cool stamps.
I hope wherever you are, you get to observe the eclipse
safely and have a nice experience with family and friends.
Here there's a 30% chance of rain.
If we do get some blue skies, sometime after lunch,
around 1:30 or 2:00, I think it'll be the maximum
that we'll get to see, here, from Austin,
it's about 65% coverage, I will do a live stream
but otherwise I won't be live streaming rain drops.
You can keep checking back for that video
or you can click that subscribe button
and the bell next to it.
You'll get notified when my videos go up,
see you on the next review.
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