Joining us now is Joshua Winter. He's a physics teacher at the BASIS, the school called Basis Independent Brooklyn.

He's got 20 years experience teaching astronomy topics, and he was scheduled to join us now to give us a preview of the eclipse that is going to take place on Monday.

We'll talk about both things a little bit to the extent that his expertise can cover both things. Joshua Winter, welcome to WNYC. Hello.

Hello, Brian. Thank you for having me. It's been a crazy day. Well, you know, everybody's

been saying all week there's going to be an unusual natural occurrence that's going to make everybody feel weird and disoriented.

We just thought it was going to be an eclipse on Monday, not an earthquake on Friday.

Where were you at 1023? Were you in class?

I was in school. I did not have a class at the moment, but I was in my office adjacent to a classroom, and we definitely felt the shaking. The students were a bit obviously disoriented. It was quite an experience. We evacuated the building just out of precaution, but now we're back in and doing the best we can to keep going with a regular

school day. Everybody's a little excited for sure. But it's been quite the Friday.

But so there's a trick trying to get, I presume this is a high school, right? Correct, yeah.

Trying to get high school students to get back on task after an earthquake and an evacuation of the building.

Good luck.

Exactly.

We're doing our best, though.

Are there any earthquake physics?

Obviously, you were here to talk about an eclipse, but are there any earthquake physics that, off top of your head you would share with us?

Well, one thing I would like to say about the earthquake in relation to the eclipse is that the two events are in no way related.

I've been seeing a lot of conspiracy theories about how there's an increased risk of earthquakes during eclipses.

There's absolutely no scientific evidence for that.

There are about a thousand of these 5.0 earthquakes happen every year around the world. And so

that averages three or four a day. Obviously, it don't happen in New York very often. But I'm sure plenty of people are going to try to, as humans, we like to find patterns and connections even where they don't exist. And so people are going to, are obviously going to try to connect the event to the eclipse, which is a dramatic event, and this earthquake, which is also a dramatic event, and try to find connections to them. but they're completely unrelated. Both very interesting, but completely unrelated. So the eclipse didn't cause

the earthquake. We had somebody before who asked, could the earthquake affect what happens

...