Monday, Aug. 21, students at Lawrence North got an unique chance to go outside and see the solar eclipse. This eclipse was a unique experience as it stretched across the country and the sun was fully covered by the moon. Indiana however was not in the line of totality, which means that the sun was not 100 percent covered. Indianapolis saw about 91.5 percent coverage of the sun according to the National Weather Service. So while students did not get to see full coverage, they got to see an eclipse that they won’t see in the U.S. for many years to come.

“It was very eventful. As soon as the eclipse started happening a bunch of people rushed out,” senior Xavier Walls said.

Students got the chance to go outside if they were in a science class during the G4 block or if they got a signed permission slip by both their science teacher and G4 teacher. These students got to see what the eclipse really entailed. Many students had false thoughts about what the eclipse would be like before getting to actually see it.

“I thought it was going to be like rocks flying and everything. It's kinda cool, you know, the sun covered up, but I thought it was going to be rocks flying with balls of fire and everything,” sophomore Jalah Lyles said.

This year’s solar eclipse was the first total solar eclipse in the U.S. since 1979. During the 1979 eclipse, only Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada were able to see the totality of the eclipse. What made this eclipse unique was that the total eclipse stretched across the country.

“It doesn’t happen very often. I know this one particularly is unique because it's the first total solar eclipse that's really going to span from coast to coast. It's going to start in California and go all the way to the east coast so it rarely happens like that,” science teacher Sara Stevens said.

In order to view the eclipse, students had to have on special solar eclipse glasses. These glasses were not easy to come by though. The school was able to get enough for each science teacher to have one classroom set of glasses. Students shared these glasses outside so that everyone got the chance to view the eclipse.

“The science department has been preparing for the last couple of weeks to make sure at least our science teachers have the opportunity to take our students out because it's an awesome educational opportunity. However, last week we hit a snag when we realized that due to the dangers of kids staring at the sun that we had to be very careful with it and we decided that only science teachers are supposed to take students out,” Stevens said.

Stevens believes this was a special opportunity for the students today, not only because the eclipse does not happen very often, but because students got to learn more about science. Stevens hopes this may have sparked more interest for science in more students as they got to see how it actually related to the world in person.

“I think it's important because science is all about discovering things and sometimes when you are in a classroom you forget how cool the natural world can be. So seeing something like that in person just kind of gets everyone excited about science and about the way the world works,” Stevens said.