The early start, started an hour late. Amy realized her phone wasn't change to this time zone, so we were already an hour past when we thought (why yesterday was so late as well)! Ha! Oh well, we ate a good breakfast and then talked about what to do today. Amy wanted to head to a Modern Art museum, and seeing as though I have seen more art in the last month than in my entire life x10, I didn't feel the need to throw 80SEK to see this one. With that being said, I went to the science and technology museum. I'm just going to say it now, GREAT CHOICE.
On the way there I had to hop on and off metros, and end up taking a bus. This is just one of the churches I passed on the way.
It was 40SEK to get in, so quite a good deal as well. The first exhibit room I saw was all about the invention of radio, and how they found radio waves. It went into details and also showed a few examples and situations where these inventions saved peoples lives. More specifically, when a crew first went to go survey the North Pole.
After I was done there I headed to the next room, all about mechanics. I read countless tidbits about steam engines, turbines, fire engines, air planes, missiles, cars, bikes, etc... it was all here.
As you can see, bicycles didn't always come with training wheels. This is literally a solid plank of wood attached to some wheels. One of the first bicycles. There was no way to turn, and no breaks, so, ride at your own risk.
This was a 1:5 scale model of the Wright's Brothers Airplane during the first flight! Which I found lasted 12 seconds and covered a vast 37 meters. But hey, they were in the air. First people to ever do something that is so common now days. My hat goes off to them.
The next exhibit I headed into was all about Space Exploration. Really awesome stuff here. I learned a lot that I had never even thought about before. How they exercise (strapped down), sleep (in suspended sleeping bags), and a lot of details about missions, food, and astronaut life. Of course with tons of NASA history as well. What was even better, was the hands on part, 3 times a day, 7 people get to do this (yep, I got lucky again).
The orbit-o-death! This was an astronaut training contraption to get the feel for weightlessness. It was pretty intense. Spinning every which way whenever. Definitely fun though, it really was a workout stabilizing myself as well.
The next part was great! Although this time it was only in swedish... luckily, it was about optical illusions! Convenient. There were all the normal good ones; Muller-Lyer illusion, Kanizsa's Triangle, the Ponzo illusion and so on. There also were some cool prisms to play with lasers.
This led into the "Sports" exhibit. There were hands-on tests for flexibility, reaction time, balance, strength, jumping, etc. It is always good fun testing yourself on all of these. I seemed to be easily exceeding the average in all of the categories, except flexibility, of which I landed in the 30-40 year old man range :/. That'll tell you something... I can't touch my toes!
The next deal I went to was "Mind Ball" !!! Really great. This reminded me of "Brain Pong", which I played in a cognitive science fair at UCSD a year or so ago. However, brain pong worked by an EEG cap reading your mirror neuron circuit. This game involved the nifty headband with magnetic plates in it, reading your alpha and theta waves. Alpha waves are generated by calmness, they are naturally given off in periods of light sleep or near sleep. Theta waves are involved in focused situations with steady concentration. So, you could either pick concentrated or calm for this game to work. You are sitting across from someone else, with a ball in between you, whoever registers the higher waves at that given moment, the ball with edge towards the other person. Sort of if you were pushing the ball with your brain. I played a 7 year old kid. It was pretty great. His parents told me he was doing this all day, so I was a bit worried. It started off with him almost throwing the ball at me, it was well on my side. I got the hang of it and was able to push it back. Once I found out what to do in order to register the highest amount of waves, I began letting him slowly push it towards me, only to push it back just before I lost, several times ;). The kid had expressions of pure joy on his face. This guy is going to be a thinker - I think? Anyway, I was defeated, and wanted a picture with my dominator.
The next room was filled with mind games such as The Tower of Babel and other block games. As well as tons of cool contraptions by Galelio, Da Vinci and the like. This was very time consuming as I had to complete and observe every item in the building :).
At this point I had been to most of the exhibits that stood out to me the most. So, I headed into a few about telephones, computers, energy, women's inventions, and copyright laws + inventions... These all had a few cool things to do, and some stuff to read that was interesting. I especially liked in one of the telephone rooms a giant map of the world they had laid out. With a headphone jack being located in almost every country. You could plug in your headphones and hear the radio that was being broadcasted by that country! It was great! Although I do want to know how they picture the stations, as the USA's was some priest talking about satan, and Canada's was some guy talking about his heart problems ... whereas the rest of the world was generally music! Alas...
The last part I went into was the Mining exhibit. It was underground.
And somewhat real... it had rock ceiling and wooden overpasses. I had to crouch down the whole time I was down there!!! I am writing a complaint. Giving me back problems I tell ya.
Anyway, just browsed through this part, as it was getting late and it didn't stimulate me too much. Still cool nonetheless.
After I was out of the museum, I was going to meet up with Amy + Becca, but they were going to go to another gallery. So I decided to go exploring... I jumped on the metro, waited a few stops, and then hopped off. Bam, right in front of me, woods! Let's go in?! Yes. Off into the woods I went... Pretty serene, and then I saw it, a tepee! This came in quite handy because if I ended up getting lost, I had some shelter. Not a bad job on it though, eh?
I got back to the flat around 6:30, time for dinner and rest before the last big day of events in Stockholm!
No comments:
Post a Comment