Oxford - two great Museums

Hi there and welcome to the Oxford Leg of our Journey, If you have been following this series of UK blogs the whole way you will have noticed that for this leg of the journey we deviated from the original plan. 

The original plan was to pass through Oxford (because we have previously done a blog from here in 2014) and to head out to Warwick castle and to see Shakespeare's home town.

However halfway through the trip we worked out my cousin was in England so we decided to catch up with her and we all ran off to Oxford together so that it wouldn't be too far for her to get home at the end of the day.

That said this trip to Oxford was definitely completely different from our last experience of Oxford. So lets get into it!  

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The first place that we stumbled on that was free and available was the Museum of the History of Science

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/ 

It basically had anything and everything that pertains to science throughout history, and all the cool instruments and apparatus that made science possible.

 

Above Center: A Microscope that was made for King George III in about 1770

Above: Mapping the Stars



Left: Looks like a pee pot I hear you say? well no!
It was actually specially designed to regularise penicillin production. 
The vessels could be stacked for larger-scale production and readily transported. 
See setup below

 There were gadgets and gizmos galore (sorry not sure what this one was, but it did look cool)

Below: A Cheat sheet, they were formulas that were engraved into little pocket-size stylish cheat sheets or reference cards. They often had star charts and bearing angles etc on them, to find the time of day.

 

 Left: The cylindrical "Ready Reckoner", reckons interest at a rate of 4%.

Above: Some of the stained-glass windows in the Museum of the History of Science, there is a massive difference between science related stained-glass windows and religious stained-glass windows!

There were more photos of the Museum of the History of Science however as I previously mentioned they were just gizmos and gadgets everywhere. 

As our party consisted of an engineer, a scientist and a nurse I believe that there was a bit there for each of us and then a little bit more. 

After the Museum of the History of Science we headed off to see if we could find the Natural History Museum and to see if it was free (who doesn't like free?).

The Oxford Natural History Museum I would have to say was very good and I would even go so far as to say that it was better then the one in London!

First photo up is one that Kyran wanted you all to see -

Below: The common cockchafer

They had displays on many subjects - minerals, taxidermy, cultural artifacts, historical scientists, skeletons EVERYTHING!!!

Above- Left: Francis Bacon a philosopher and statesman. One of his famous quotes was: A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Middle: Dinosaur!
Right: Me chilling with Mr Darwin 

Suspicious Kyran, being Suspicious!

Japanese Spider-Crab

Above & Below: This was the main part of the museum, even the architecture was amazing

Bugs lots of bugs, I really enjoyed the bugs!

Alrighty then the next little bit of the blog will be brought to you by Kyran as he knows what it is all about!

ROBOTS - Biologically Inspired

Walter the crawling insect robot. Walter is some kind of "Ant" robot, with six legs and the ability to walk around and sense his environment. The robot looks like an ant (to me) but could represent many different 6-legged insects. I should have taken a better look at the text associated with it, because I can't find any info online about this guy. 

In general, the robot uses four ultra-sonic distance sensors on the front of his head, in a way that allows him to sense obstacles in front of him. He also processes the information they give him to work out if there is a moving object in front, and if so, he tries to follow it. This allows multiple of this robot to "follow the leader" just like ants do (but real ants do it by chemo-receptors, aka their noses).

The robot has an operating system running on it that allows for multiple sensory inputs and outputs. 

Each leg has its own dedicated processor meaning they can all move on their own simultaneously. 


The legs used to have 3 joints but it was reduced down to only 2 joints for stability.

Walter's "claws" at the end of each leg long pencil-like leg, are made from pencil-top rubbers, and they act like a shoe to add grip.  
Accompanying Walter was a another insectoid robot, but a flying one. I'm not sure exactly what this one does. One would hope it could fly.

OK then, so back over to Mercedes here just to finish up this blog. One of the last exhibits that we saw and were most fascinated with was bees! 

 



Up in the very corner of the museum in what looks like an abandoned room there was a bee colony that was doing it's thing between two pieces of glass, and the house was connected to a window opening that was also see through. 

You could see the bees coming and going. You could see them feeding babies. We could even see the queen doing her thing! You can watch the bees come back from a mission, and do their little bee-dance to indicate the direction food to the other bees who are about to leave the hive.  

It was amazing to see everything happening like that. What I had never seen before was that some bees were arriving with red pollen on their legs and others with yellow pollen. so see the picture left from where all those bees were coming from, based on the pollen colour. 

Above: Hertford Bridge, popularly known as the Bridge of Sighs, 

There is a false legend saying that many decades ago, a survey of the health of students was taken, and as Hertford College's students were the heaviest, the college closed off the bridge to force them to take the stairs, giving them extra exercise. However, if the bridge is not used, the students actually climb fewer stairs than if they do use the bridge.

Alright friends that brings us to the end of another blog I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed doing it! If you're ever in Oxford I would strongly suggest that you go see the Natural History Museum!

Stay tuned for the next blog which takes us up to Duxford to the Imperial War Museum and I can most definitely tell you it will be written by Kyran. 

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Remember: A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Bath to Stonehenge

Hi and welcome to the Bath to Stonehenge leg of our journey around the greater London area.

Above: Map showing the ground that we covered and what you're going to learn something about in this blog.

First up - Bath

Before I get into it too much I'd like to give a brief summary of British geology, as Bath and the fact there is a hot spring there is a little abnormal and unexpected. 

England as a whole is almost completely sedimentary (comprised of sediment that over time has cemented together to make stones such as sandstone). 

There is an old section and a new section but we won't get into that! What is important to know is that Bath was built where it is because it has a hot spring that surfaces at a temperature of 46ºC in the center. This is the only hot spring In England! But mostly that's because of a technicality!

FUN FACT: Apparently to be considered a hot spring the water temperature can not be less than 30 degrees celcius.

There are actually five known instances of thermal springs in England BUT only one whose temperature is above 30 degrees and that is the one in Bath!

It is then interesting as to why this is the only "hot" spring in England if the geology is more or less the same everywhere. 

It has to do with the Geo-thermal Gradient, which is this idea that the middle of the earth is hot and so it stands to reason that as you go deeper into the earths surface it should get hotter.  

A normal Geo-thermal gradient is for every 1 km that you travel down the temperature should rise by 25 degrees Celsius, BUT in Bath the geothermal Gradient is actually only 20C for every 1km that you travel down.

So now we a dealing with the only hot spring in England which is weird as well as the ground isn't nearly as hot as it should be which makes the fact that the water is even hot at all a bit confusing!

I'm getting to the answer now I promise... The picture below is something that I stole off the internet that is a possible explanation for why all this is the only hot spring in England. 

The answer: The water travels from the hills through a channel of folded sheets of Carboniferous limestone where it is taken down and warmed up and the straight back to the surface before it looses too much heat. On the far right of the diagram is Bath, where the water surfaces, and you can see the water travels down past 3km under the surface, supposedly getting to 70 degrees, before surfacing in the hot springs at 46 degrees.
 
Fun Fact: The Bath water is in chemical equilibrium with the local Carboniferous Limestone, which if you ever go there and taste it you will soon find out!

OK  well that brings your geology lesson to a conclusion, lets move on with the rest of the blog!

Above: Bath is well known for its roman baths, hence roman coins were found in abundance.

There was a full wall of different coins that were had been found in and around the site. They covered a huge range of time, many hundreds of years worth of coins were found at Bath.

As we had to pay to get into Bath, to make it worth your while they give you these little guide things that you put up to your ear and it tells you different things about different displays. 
Left: Here is Kyran learning everything! 

I know it's hard to see (try clicking on it..) but the Above Image shows the Spring pool that the water surfaces in and then the route it takes around the complex to the other various pools.




Left and Below: Some of the water passages that the steaming hot water flows through.

Above: These guys were funny buggers, they were meant to be roman-period people doing roman-period things. They never broke character while I was watching them but they still interacted with the public.

Quote: "Never trust a slave who enjoys his work!" 

 

Statues and upper floor around the main bath area:
The upper floor (called the Terrace) and the statues found all around the top of the main bath are actually just a recent (1894) tourism addition to the baths. There were no official surviving roman pillars or terrace around the bath.  

Left: There were statues around the main pool this is one of the more interesting ones.


Below is a bad photo that we took of the signage that was at the site it's hard to see but it tells you the statues are all of roman governors of the province of Britannia and them it lists which ones and where they are around the bath.

Above: A model showing what the baths would have looked like in the romans times. As you can see in the model/dioramas, the complex around these hot springs was quite huge in comparison to the buildings around them today.

Below: The way the roofs were made and a piece of it.
 

Left: This was one of the cooler pools I believe however it is now full of coins.

Above: This is what is left of the Heated room. The way it works is that the pillars that you can see supported the floors in this room. Hot smoky air was drawn from a fire in the stokehole and circulated around the pillars. It passed through the hollow flue tiles that were built into the walls, and then the smoke from the charcoal fire escaped through a series of small vents in the roof.

Ok lets get the last of these bath photos out of the way so that we can see Stonehenge! 
 

That brings us to the end of the Roman baths in Bath. 

Next up Stonehenge!

The last time that I was at Stonehenge I would have been about 12 years old, so things have definitely changed since is was there last. There is now a visitor center that is all fancy and modern-looking, and they are also very happy to take your money for the right to see the stones. 

We decided to be cheap asses and instead of paying to walk over a hill to see it, we drove around the corner and saw it from the Highway as it was just as good a view as any. 

There is also not much I can tell you about Stonehenge as there seems to be little that anyone knows for sure about it. From my research on it, it seems that every man and his dog has a theory of who what when where and why regarding Stonehenge. 

So lets leave it as, I have done my duty and I have taken Kyran to see the world famous landmark and it looked exactly like the pictures show it!  

 

By the way, yes these are the photos that were taken from the highway!

 

And that brings us to the end of this blog entry, it was a big day for us and a lot of ground was covered.
But at the end of the day when we got to our hotel Kyran enjoyed a beer and a sandwich and five minutes to himself before we had to start writing blogs for your enjoyment. 

So if you like reading our blogs don't forget to follow us on Google+, and stay tuned for more adventures with the Findlaters as we travel the world (slowly..)!

Remember never trust a slave that enjoys his work!