I cannot resist science museums. I am endlessly amused by models and hands-on experiments. As a reward for good behavior or just for fun, my father and I would take the motorcycle to a dusty building that contained much-loved exhibits: an echoing shell that stretched between floors, a wooden catenary arch, a rotating platform for demonstrating the gyroscopic properties of a bicycle wheel... I had fun rediscovering everything, running my fingers over the impossible figure of the Penrose triangle and boggling again at how visual illusions tricked me into seeing things even though I knew what's going on.

The Boston Science Museum is, of course, far more advanced than the underfunded science center of my youth. This one had augmented reality displays, lightning shows, and liquid nitrogen demos. The Star Wars exhibit was fascinating, drawing plenty of connections between the fantasies of the screen and the realities of current technology. Scattered throughout the exhibit were hands-on engineering challenges: build a magnetic levitation train from LEGO(tm), plan a Tatooine base, experiment with robots' facial expressions... It was fun to see adults eyeing the interactive areas, probably also wishing that the kids would hurry up and put the pieces back already!

It was a lot of fun, and I wish that I had more energy today. I had to miss the MIT museum and a few other museums because of cramps, but that's okay. Maybe I can take the second circus. =)

On Technorati: boston, vacation, science

I firmly believe that the best way to get to know a city is to wander around. With that in mind, I strolled around downtown Boston, picking up a pocket-sized fold-out map and various brochures from the Visitor Information Center and a bottle of Noodler's Ink from a wonderful little pen shop on Bromfield. I also took the opportunity to pass by the Free Software Foundation. RMS was out, but I met John Sullivan and gave him a hug for working on Planner. (I'd forgotten to bake gluten-free cookies for him. Oops.) I also walked around the park, wandered over to the public library, and bought a pattern and some cloth from Walmart.

Boston is pretty, with plenty of trees and beautiful brick buildings lining narrow, winding roads. It is thus all too easy to get lost in, not because the streets are difficult to locate on a map (they're clearly labelled) but because wandering around without any particular aim is so pleasant. =)

On Technorati: boston