ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (WCAX) – If you missed this month’s eclipse, a new exhibit at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury gives visitors a more metaphorical look at how it affected the region.
Last Friday, Zach Umperovitch was one of the world’s only experts on Rube Goldberg machines, visited Fairbanks Museum.
“This plan, by the way, is completely impromptu. I had no idea what I was going to do,” Umperovitch said.
The museum gave Umperovitch a challenge — re-create the total solar eclipse using one of his signature complicated contraptions. “We had such an amazing experience, that we wanted to capture just another little piece of that amazing day here,” said the museum’s Adam Kane.
So, Umperovitch set out to achieve the impossible, using what he could find around the museum and a hardware store to make the eclipse in under a minute.
“It starts by — we have to go back in time to April 8, 2024, where time has certainly flown by. Time will then, rewind as a clock, goes back and forth as a tether ball. That’s going to allow a bowling ball to roll along these tracks and will drop the solar eclipse glasses on the animals, one bat at a time,” Umperovitch said. After that, the “Earth” needs to get into place with the help of a ladder and bicycle wheel.
You might be wondering about the weather. Umperovitch has it covered — a fan on a skateboard will blow the clouds away. Then, the sun will turn on — in this case, a flashlight — which will trigger a telescope to get into perfect position. “All before sand gets to release out and will slowly cause the moon to get into position and finally create the solar eclipse,” Umperovitch explained.
It’s Umperovitch’s second year building at the Fairbanks Museum, and the staff are over the moon about what they believe he can inspire. “This kind of experiment, on a small scale you can go home right away and do, and so that’s what we want to try to convey to people — there’s a world to experiment,” Kane said.