During the solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024, over a thousand people gathered in the Old Main Quad on the SUNY New Paltz campus to watch. Although the eclipse was only partial at New Paltz, it was still an exciting event. The Department of Physics and Astronomy set up 13 telescopes with either solar filters […]
College physics labs were conducted with half the students physically in the room, each working with a remote lab partner. Since this is similar to how NASA astronauts perform experiments on the International Space Station (ISS), those roles came to be called “Astronauts” and “Experts.” Emphasizing the connection Astronauts, NASA, and the ISS seems to have […]
As we have done in past years, a small group of those interested came to Wooster Hall to observe the skylight lights cross over the staircase at Solar Noon (at 12:58:16 EDT). This year the actual Solstice (at 11:54 EDT) was very close to the same time, which is not always the case. Raj Pandya, […]
What a difference a year makes. Last year I made a time-lapse video of the Vernal equinox in Wooster Hall by standing next to a wall and taking a photo about once a minute for an hour. This year I have a much nicer video from a raspberry pi camera which captures an image every […]
I have been investigating the requirements for students to be able to weld on campus, which is needed for our Baja SAE team, for projects for our Engineering Senior Design course, and for other various engineering projects. One of the requirements is, naturally, adequate ventilation. Specifically1 Adequate ventilation providing 20 air changes per hour, such […]
A few weeks ago I visited Wooster Hall with a time-lapse camera to try to see what happens to the light from the skylight over the main staircase at solar noon on the Winter Solstice. I was a few days early, but even so, I think I uncovered the basic idea, which you can review […]
Wooster Hall at SUNY New Paltz has a neat feature: the main staircase is aligned directly North/South, and skylights are positioned above it so that at solar noon on the equinoxes the bottom of the staircase is illuminated by four columns of light which crawl slowly across the floor. It’s an exciting event on campus, […]
Today the doors to the new Science Hall at SUNY New Paltz are really hard to open. There is a howling sound as wind screams its way through the cracks between the doors, which goes away temporarily as you open the door (if you can!) and returns immediately when the doors close. The problem is […]
Wooster Hall at SUNY New Paltz has a neat feature. The main staircase is exactly aligned along a north-south line, and skylight windows in the ceiling were placed so that light from those windows lines up at the bottom of the staircase at solar noon on the equinoxes. In the summer the sun is […]
Wooster Hall on the SUNY New Paltz campus was completely remodeled recently, and a neat new feature is an alignment of the skylight over the main stairway such that the bottom of the stairs is lit up at exactly solar noon on the Equinox (both spring and fall). This spring when I observed this I […]