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
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
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
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!!!
Middle: Dinosaur!
Right: Me chilling with Mr Darwin
Suspicious Kyran, being Suspicious!
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| Japanese Spider-Crab |
Above & Below: This was the main part of the museum, even the architecture was amazing
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.
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.
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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