On 30/3/2007 Peter Macinnis posted:

Because my wife Chris is also a science person, our travels often go a bit peculiar.  We took a car out of Luang Prabang in February and went looking for the tomb of a French naturalist called Henri Mouhot -- he went up the Mekong in 1859 (ping!), but he was of general interest to us.

In Hawaii, 18 months back, I walked four fast miles over fresh and jagged lava in the dusk, on the lower slopes of Kilauea, dabbled around a lava flow as it shone out in the gloaming, and the walked back, just as fast, in the dark, wearing bifocals which meant the ground was out of focus.

I have seen Cugnot's 1769 locomotive/automobile -- and Jim Smart will have seen that as well -- I have straddled the San Andreas fault and hoped like hell it wouldn't move and stayed in a house where Humphry Davy's mother used to live (that was happenstance, not planned).  I have been down a Neolithic flint mine and handled the Piltdown "remains" in London (luck came into that one as well), seen Galileo's mummified finger in Florence and dabbled around a few other volcanoes.

I am not getting any younger, and we are moving as fast as we can to travel to as many curious places as we can.  If you had your druthers, what would be on YOUR list of places of special scientific interest?

I would rate these highly, though some are less likely than others, for a variety of reasons:

The Galapagos
Grand Canyon
Selborne (England)
Africa's Rift Valley
The Field Museum in Chicago
Yellowstone National Park
Madagascar
Komodo
Lake Turkana

What else should one aim to see before one dies, from a science viewpoint?

What else should one aim to see before one dies, from a science viewpoint?

Alan Emmerson responded:

Greenwich old RO and Queen's House
Pump Room at Bath (Tompion)
Ironbridge Coalbrookdale
Stephenson, Brunel and Telford bridges, Firth of Forth Bridge, Tacoma Narrows
Clock Room at Guild Hall London, BHI Upton
Borhaven Museum Leiden - Huygens
Kew Pumping Station and Redruth district
SS Great Britain, Bristol
The Bodlian
The Ashmolian
Kittyhawk
Langley AFB and RAE Farnborough and RAF Duxford
Los Alamos
Aircraft park and museum Tucson Arizona the name of which escapes me Parma?
The various diaries and lab notebooks - Priestly, Lavoisier, Boyle, Hooke
Smithsonian - various, British Museum, Powerhouse museum Hargrave collection and
Watt's rotative beam engine.
St Joseph's College Sydney - Father O'Leary's free pendulum clock
Radio telescopes Parkes, Tidbinbilla and the Anglo Aust Telescope
Conniston Waters, Bonneville, Daytona
Principia MPN, Horologium Oscillatorium , and Discorses


Eremia commented:

Yes, there are many places and events related to Science that I wish to see, absorb or complete before "the soil takes me back".

When travelling through India about 5 years ago,I went to the Observatory in Jaipur "Jantar Mantar". It was amazing...created by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh (think that is the correct spelling). I spent two days there. There were many huge instruments in intricate masonary all offering an accurate measurement of time,the declination of the sun,the attitude and the azimuth, the position of constellations in the sky for the day, the eclipses and the allied astronomical phenomena. It is both a feat of science and a work of architecture. I think it was built around 1727.

I just mention this to see if anybody else has been there?

I would love to see the Pyramids, travel to the Antarctic, and trek the Kokodo Trail ( was there as a child).

I would love to go to the Bay of Naples....after reading "The Earth" (Richard Fortey).This place being where the science of geology started. To stand at the base of Mount Vesuvius.

I dream of going to Greece (and will in the near future) to walk the path of the Pre-Socratics...Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. I would love to go to the Island of Lesbos were one of my favourite women lived and loved..Sappho.

However life is so sweetly short!

For the moment there are a few things that are more tangible and realistic, given my life at present. They may not be directly related to Science as such but do indeed embrace a strong component.

I want to complete my flying lessons so that I can "go solo". In achieving this means that I have in only a small way mastered the science of flight and navigation. I can fly amongst " my dear clouds" that I watch, love and try and learn about.

I want to complete my book, which I hope will leave a small ecological footprint as an "Environmental Love Story". If only to inspire passion and curiosity of this resplendent world for our future children.

I want to get my camel trekking up and going on the Hopetoun Beach. This venture is a whole package. I am using this as a "vehicle" ( :-) ) for education on the magnificent vista of the Fitzgerald National Park (which comes into view) and to engage children in the outdoors, the importance of one's relationship to the non-human world. I am excited about this as it truly will be "Tourism for Science Nuts". I intend to talk to groups about navigation and survival in the true sense of the word. I will incorporate navigation and "the night sky". I will talk about the immediate environs...and hopefully open hearts to the wilderness, the flora,fauna and the marine life...!!!

The other "science component" of the camel trekking will be for Julia. Walking is a form of active meditation. It will get me "back there" to that space "in the desert" which is in essence "like sitting at the top of the mountain". One reaches a clarity which shatters the  mundaneness, leaving one open to dimensions of possibilities.

In all of these grand dreams and aspirations I have one that is first and tugs at my heart and surfaces daily. That is.....that I would love to see my grandchildren. I would love to see them healthy and happy...passionate about the world, I dream of being part of their early life so that I can hopefully inspire them with curiosity and an open, thinking mind. I would like to be part of their "journey into falling in love with the natural
world", as I was with my beloved son. This sounds so simple but so important!

I would like to hear them ask "why".I would love to excite them about the salmon coloured bark that peals off the Mallee each season. To share with them the breeding habits of my resident Pardalotes the Rufous Fieldwren and to welcome the call of the Restless Flycatcher. To worship the Sacred Kingfisher when she returns to build her nest and to laugh with the joy of the Willie Wagtail. Then there are my frogs..the Hylidae and Myobatrachidae and again my beloved Underwoodisaurus milii......I would love to take my grandchildren "cloud watching".

So Peter, I guess my places of special scientific interest would be to share my passion with others..those places being in their hearts and minds.

What else should one aim to see before one dies, from a science  viewpoint?

David Allen commented:

Antarctica?

Iceland & Surtsey and you'd might as well go and watch Greenland  melt whilst you're in that neck of the.... I was going to say woods!


Alan Emmerson commented:

Just across the road from Davis Monthan is a very good aircraft museum. I remember now it's Pima
http://www.pimaair.org/
It has aeroplanes you might only read about. The Budd stainless steel special for example, a YF11A or SR71 and so on. My father's WWII mate was a director for many years and I had the good fortune to be shown them all when I visited the place in an official capacity quite a few years ago.

Apropos of Los Alamos Brian, I have been to a museum out there some where, on a day trip from Albuquerque in about 990. Might have been a SAC museum.

Having written my list, I wondered if anybody had any idea what I was on about. There are few remnants of the istory of science except where they reside in the technology.

Brian Lloyd answered:

Yes. That is a great museum.

It has aeroplanes you might only read about.   The Budd stainless  steel special for
example,
a YF11A or SR71  and so on.

There is actually a good Air Force museum near where I live at  Atwater, California. It is at the old Castle Air Force Base,  previously a SAC base but now just an underused general aviation  base. They have some things you won't see elsewhere, such as a B-36,  a B-47, and an SR-71.

My father's WWII mate was a director for many years and I
had the good fortune to be shown  them all when I visited the place  in an official
capacity quite a few years ago.

Apropos of Los Alamos Brian, I have been to a museum out there some  where, on a day
trip from Albuquerque in about 1990. Might have been a SAC museum.

Twice per year they have trips out to the Trinity site but that is S  of Albuquerque. Los Alamos National Labs is N and W of Albuquerque,  actually closer to Santa Fe. Trinity is where they made the first bang.

Having written my list, I wondered if anybody had any idea what I  was on about.  There
are  few remnants of  the history of science  except where they  reside in the
technology.

My feeling exactly. Science gets done in people's heads and is  expressed in the things that get created. Seeing the original devices  is what I think is very cool. I also like recreating things. As a kid  I build a spark station and had a receiver with a Branley coherer.  The really old designs were easy for a kid to understand. The stuff  was crude but it worked. I suspect I played hob with radio reception  in my neighborhood.

http://www.sparkmuseum.com/BEGINS_RADIO.HTM


David Bridgham replied to Brian:

A wonderful place, Iceland that is. I haven't yet been to Greenland though I'd like to. I found a groups that leads kayak trips there that I may join one of these days.

Anyway, Iceland is certainly a good place if you're interested in volcanism and continental drift and the like. I took this picture of where the plates are separating. At one point it was happening rapidly enough that they just stuck these pipes in the ground and would go out daily with a steel tape to measure the change. You'll have to turn your monitor on its side, since I was too lazy to rotating the picture.

http://cntralhed01-pool2-a18.cntral.tds.net/%7Edab/iceland/med/imgp0304.jpg

Another fun science geeky destination is the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy. They have Galileo's finger on display as well as lots of fascinating devices and instruments.

http://www.imss.fi.it/


Brian Lloyd commented:

On Mar 30, 2007, at 6:36 PM, Ray Stephens wrote:

Little Boy ?"  The attendant cocked his head to one side, raised  the opposite eyebrow and basso profundo said "Uhh, I guess it's  vaporised over Hiroshima Sir."

I think he was wrong Alan.
"Little Boy" I believe was the Plutonium job and went to Nagasaki  as an exercise in overkill.

Fat Man was the plutonium implosion weapon. Its name came from the  appearance of girth due to its spherical shape. The weapon was  spherical from the shaped, focused charges needed to implode the  plutonium to form the critical mass. Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki.

Little Boy was a U-235 bomb with a gun mechanism that "shot" a  smaller subcritical mass of U-235 into a larger subcritcal mass of  U-235 to form the critical mass. It was dropped on Hiroshima.

Little Boy was a relatively simple weapon and there was little doubt  it would work although it was very wasteful of enriched uranium,  something they didn't have a lot of (yet).

There was some question as to whether the implosion weapon would work  so they tested it first. That is the type that was tested at the  Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.