Antwerp Freight Museum- Taylor

One thing at the Freight Museum that I found especially interesting is the different theories about how Antwerp was founded. One story is that the Romans founded the city when a Roman soldier defeated a giant. After continued research, it is thought that the city was actually founded by Vickings. This is because the original layout of the city is similar to that of Vicking villages. I was glad to learn more about this after Adam told us about the giant statue and the roman soldier and after Brianna and I went to Het Steen. 

SREF - Naval History

 For the SREF project I ended up going to he Naval Museum with some of the others. The museum was informative, even with everything being in Dutch. My favorite thing there was a small model of how rope was made into different sizes to fit the vastly different jobs it was needed for. It appeared to be a simple process that 2 people were able to accomplish with the help of pulley systems and levers. 

SREF Project

I had the opportunity to go to the GRID Grafisch Museum which was about the history of the printing press. One thing that I learned was the beginning of the printing press and how it would eventually fuel the mass printing of books as there was often a limited amount of books beforehand. I also learned how the printing press would influence historical events such as the Protestant Reformation. The museum would also showcase how graphic design relates to the printing press. Something I found interesting was the different types of printing presses that were made and how the technology behind it changed over time.

Museum

 The thing I found most interesting at the museum in Belgium was that they first used walrus tusks for ivory. i would’ve never thought they would use walrus tusks. I think it is interesting that they found a use and need for ivory so early on in time and that they didn’t see a problem with it, unlike today where it it illegal to poach animals for ivory. 

SREF Project - Brianna

One of the museums that I went to for my SREF project was Storyworld, a museum dedicated to comics, animation, and games. One of the exhibits there showed one of the oldest animation devices called a 3D Zoetrope. Inside, there are numerous 3D models at various stages of, say, a walk cycle. When the machine turns on, the disks that these models are on will spin and lights will flash. This creates the illusion that the model inside is walking! 

Zoetropes have been around since the 1830s, and were sold as toys 30 years later. These older versions had 2D images that were pasted on the inside of a cylinder. When spun, the images appeared to be moving. Nowadays, strobe lighting is used to create a better illusion of movement. The precise timing of the strobe lights allow the models to always appear in focus to the viewer without the blurriness of movement. 

SREF Project-Dan

For my SREF project, some of my peers and I visited the Noordelijk Scheepvaartmuseum, a museum about naval history in the Netherlands. One site that was particularly interesting to me was one of the forges used by naval field smiths. The forge here contains several tools used to manufacture the steel in ships. Two forges are pictured here with the one on the left being from the 19th century and the one on the right from the 20th century. The 19th century forge uses a leather foot driven bellow while the 20th century design uses a manually operated blade. In the construction of the ships, field smiths were mainly used to heat the rivets before the steel plates of the ship’s hull were riveted. Blades were first crafted with heavy hand hammers, but were eventually replaced with pneumatic riveters. 

SREF Project- Jacob

I went to the Maritime Museum in Groningen. Out of all of the different boats, engines, replicas and paintings I found the “Zomps or Pegge” boat the most unique. It was used on streams and canals in Overijsel. They could carry up to 17 tons and where mostly used transporting cargo. The cool bit about the ship is the sides where detachable and here used to blockade the river and rise the water level for itself and other boats. At one time over 180 of these sailed on the Regge and 70 on the Berkel. There is still a working replica owned by the Zomp Foundation in Rijssen.

SREF Project - Molly

I had the opportunity to go to a Maritime Museum in Groningen. There was many different engines and boat replicas throughout the museum. They showed different parts and tools that they used for working on the ship along with tools that they used for navigation with old maps. One of the things I thought was most interesting was the little model of how they made rope and the different pulley systems. Both had to be very strong to be able to lift things in and out of these huge ships.

Brianna - Bremen Universum

Universum was so cool! I really enjoyed the exhibits related to the human body, particularly to human psychology. One exhibit had a metal ring underneath a lens. When I traced the ring while looking through the lens, I saw and felt an oval-shaped ring. In actuality, the ring was circular, and the lens distorted the ring’s shape. But how did it feel like I traced an oval with my finger?

When the brain receives differing information from various senses, it usually follows the visual impression. This goes to show that the information we perceive might not always be accurate to the physical world. It makes you wonder - what other information is our brain not telling us?

Daniel Myers- Bremen Museum

Something from the museum we visited in Bremen that really interested me was the Steuern Mit Infrarotlicht. This exhibit showcased an app called “Midnight” which tracks hand and finger movements. It functions by using three LEDs to illuminate your hands with infrared light, and the reflecting light is then recorded by two cameras which capture precise and  detailed 3D images of the hands. Hand movements are calculated from the 120 images that are taken per second. This exhibit helps give me an idea of how certain motion capturing technologies specifically function. By understanding how this works, this gives me a much better idea of how motion capturing technologies function in specific applications such as computing body movements in VR simulations and games, motion capturing for cutscenes in video games, and potential future applications in interacting with augmented reality. Check me doing cool stuff in the simulation below!

Link to Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSK3ZatrBHmb4KQJxMM0Bhs-k9N6bGvG/view?usp=drivesdk

Bremen Museum - Allison D

Something I found very interesting at the Bremen Museum was the 3rd floor nature exhibit. It showed the incredible science that happens in nature without human intervention! I found the interaction between light and water particularly interesting. One exhibit showed exactly how a light wave is broken down when it hits water. The light was broken down into different color wavelengths with blue penatrating a few inches into the surface and the yellow light wavelength penetrating to a deeper depth. 

Breman Universum

 I have always loved volcanoes and an exhibit on the natural science floor of Breman's museum provided further insight into certain mechanisms of a volcanoes. Sometimes, volcanoes produces something that resembles a smoke ring. As it turns out, these rings are not smoke, but water vapor and other gases. When pressure builds up in a volcanoes, these rings eventually get pushed up. The interactive exhibit at the museum demonstrated this by allowing users to evenly push down on the surface, propelling mist into the air to form a ring.

Bremen Universum

Something that I learned from the Universum was how circuits worked. When I first tried to figure it out, the station quickly gave me a red light which represented that I blew a fuse. During the second attempt, it was explained that to me that the positives and negatives needed to be matching (bottom hill and upper hill if I remember correctly). I eventually tried the harder solutions which required connections to more than just one light like the first one that I tried. Thank you Liz for explaining it all to me!

Bremen Universum - Maddi

 I found the heat transmission exhibit to be pretty interesting. It had 5 different materials on the table and thermal imaging foil on all of them. As I placed my hand on the foil, I noticed right away that my handprint stayed on the foil for different periods of time. This is because the level of heat transmission varies between the materials. So a material with a high level of heat transmission would keep color in the foil for a shorter amount of time. Also, some materials feel cooler cause they dissipate the heat faster. 

Bremen Museum

 At the museum in Bremen i thought the Tempratur

Fühlen was the most interesting. This interactive spot showed how different materials such as cork, wood, copper, aluminum, and counter top board absorbed heat.  I learned that the wood and cork absorbed heat the heat the most. These are less dense than the aluminum and copper so they hold heat better. I thought it was cool to see how they absorbed the heat off my hand. 

Bremen Universum

I particularly enjoyed the sensory exhibits. The one where you took your hands and rubbed them backwards and forwards across the grid was interesting. Your supposed to only feel contact where your hands touch the grids but your brain tricks you and adds feeling in between causing your hand to feel slippery and velvety.

Bremen Universum

At the universum, there were a lot of cool science related interactive exhibits. One of the cool things I did was participate in an earthquake simulator. I have learned a lot about earthquakes from planet earth and my geology class, but I have never experience what one was supposed to feel like. I read a little bit about earthquakes and volcanos outside the simulator while we were waiting. When we got inside the other students and I sat down in the mock living room. We pressed a button and the room started shaking. It wad really cool to experience this because I never have before. Also, the earthquakes were what specific ones through history felt like, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

Bremen Museum

I thought that looking at the fiber optic cable through the microscope was very interesting. I did not know that inside the cable is glass fibers that transmit information through light signals. The electronic signals are converted to optical signals so they can be easily transported before they get recovered back. 10% of households in Germany also have fiber optic connections. Overall, looking through the microscope was fun. 

5/24/2022 Bremen

 One thing that surprised me was when a lot of us tried the tug of war with the pulley system. It surprised me that even though there were 6 of us against 1 that we weren't able to win. Even though the pulley was rigged for the one side to have 5 times the strength I thought that 6 would be able to overcome that but it didn't.