The more you know...

[elwen]

We went to the Exploratorium today. It's an awesome place, and I wish we'd had more time to spend there -- we left late and had issues finding a place for lunch and didn't arrive until 3:30 -- but it was full of depressing reminders, of the things I knew, and of the things I've forgotten. Half the time I spent cringing and saying things like, "Oh God, it's KMT!" or, "Nooo, not the E&M!" And I had thoughts like, "Oooh, what a nice Boltzmann distribution," and, "Hey, it's a coupled oscillator!"

Anyways. It's a very impressive place, full of excellently designed little demos that show science at its most fun.

But I somewhat agree with my dad that it's sometimes very advanced. Rather, I would say that it's bimodal. If you're older, you're overwhelmed by the number and sometimes the complexity of concepts. If you're a little kid, like my brother, you do what the sign tells you without caring for the explanation and have a blast.

I quote: "<bratty voice>It's winter vacation not winter education.</bratty voice>"

I didn't get to see everything, about which I'm very sad. But they had a cloud chamber, which I've always wanted to see. It was just as cool as I thought it would be. ^_^v

Also, they had plushie diseases in the gift store. nendil showed me pictures online a while ago, and I'd always thought they'd only be found in obscure web stores, so I was surprised. I still think the flu is cute, although it's little more than a sea green blob. My sister thinks it's asking for it to buy one, though.

Comments

[nendil.livejournal.com]

You could always get the Martian biobe. Whatever it'll infect you with, it's long dead.

As cute and plushie-able those things are, though, even I'm kind of creeped out by the Ebola. o.O