Thursday, July 21, 2011

The museum of science.

As planned, Runi, myself, Dada & Bou-di all went to  the  Museum of  Science today.  Yash had been to his lab already. Lunch over, we availed a  Green line train  (C-line) to detrain at North Stn. & then took a bus to get down at the Sc. Museum which overlooked the beautiful Charles River flowing by  its side.
There are  systems as well as facilities of admission to the Museum &  Runi chose to be an annual member who can, throughout the yr., take admissions along with   a few guests, at a concessional rate.
Problem of admission being resolved, we entered the Butterfly garden which is a glass-enclosed conservatory & is home to a variety of free-flying butterflies. Many snapshots were taken & even with a butterfly on Boudi's saree. It is not permissible to drive away butterflies, if they are on your body or clothing, in this natural home of butterflies/moths.
In the Exhibit hall...... we saw a variety of models of science & technology.......models of  light & optics.... we found time & pleasure to handle a No. of  easy-to-handle models of light & Optics. We were highly impressed by the model named Frozen shadow, where one stands against a phosphorescent wall, having some chemical thereon & light is beamed upon it , for a few seconds,  to generate a shadow & the board or the screen, on account of its phosphorescence,develop a shadow  (The screen had a  chemical  painted upon it),  lasting for a few seconds.  Runi & Dada  clicked their cameras here.

We saw many models of optical illusions.    Name-----Seeing is deceiving.   Human brain has its own shortcuts for what it sees, but, in many other cases, as here, optical illusions deceive the brain and we see curves whereas those are straight lines,  circular forms of different sizes, whereas they are of the same size and so on.

We saw tamarins of   Ecuador ------ they are but smaller monkeys in  trees and are live. Children were taking much interest here, to see the tamarins jumping and running.
Fossils------Runi asked me touch a fossil  of a dinosaur  (many varieties of Dinosaurs are there, of course)..... there was a small circular opening for touching the same and it was actually written there----' touch me here' 'Possible causes of the extinction of dinosaurs were written in a place, on a board. I came to know that though some asteroid striking the earth millions of yrs. ago & thereby causing the end of the  Dinosaur-age was a cause, for sure, other causes like volcanic eruptions etc. also were there. 

We saw mathematical and statistical models also-------- we saw Archimedises's experiment of  lifting of water from a lower level, through a screw or a spiral , by rotating a disc at the open end, to  an upper level.
We saw quotes of  Scientists  like Sir Isaac Newton, Hardy, La Place & many ors.

Also, We saw Models of  solar energy, Radio & microwaves,  experimental models of sound etc. I  learnt that if   millions of  Nano particles ,of  let's say water, can combine with each other at the rate of  millions combing per sec for millions of yrs, then a water-droplet  can be formed, after all.
We saw a 3D video  show. Ocean in  an African coast. The African people & their traditional dances. Swarms of  Sardine  fish  versus fish-hunting birds diving into the sea and fishermen catching a huge huge lot of the fishes.  Polarised light was used in this show & we wore 3D vision specs. &  the effect of digital technology  for the video plus audio cast a  spell on us.

In short, we  became aware of the fact that science & technology is surrounding us every moment, everywhere.

We took a break in a  cafe  inside the Museum & had something to chew. Then, again after exploring some  other corners of the  museum, we found people going out in Nos. In the wake of the outgoing visitors, we also made our exit.














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