On August 1st, the Corvallis Benton County Library hosted a public lecture by Sarah Hagen, a PhD candidate in Mathematics in connection with the August 21st total eclipse. Her topic, “Greeks and the Eclipse: A Geometry Story”, was about how the Ancient Greeks used eclipses to measure the size of the sun and moon and the distance to these celestial objects.
Sarah practiced this speech at the Graduate Student Summer Seminar on July 24th, and the practice helped as the library lecture was a hit! Like many who speak to groups at local libraries, Sarah was expecting a handful of guests, not the full room that greeted her. Sarah humorously noted: “They had to bring in extra chairs and there were still people standing along the one wall!”
Former College of Science Dean Sastry Pantula put Hagen in touch with the coordinator of the Eclipse/Space Grant Festival to do an additional presentation as part of the full weekend celebration of the Eclipse. Sarah will talk at 10:00am on August 19th at the LaSells Stewart Center in the Construction Engineering Hall. For more information about this event and other university wide eclipse activities, go to: http://communications.oregonstate.edu/space/events/festival-information.
Sarah is slated to give this presentation two more times in Eugene in the near future.
