owlfish: (Nextian - Name that Fruit!)
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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:19pm on 04/03/2006
Today I went to the Natural History Museum with something like 15 people I don't know* and looked at shiny crystals, meteorites, and soaring ceilings. (Do you spot a common theme in my week?). I learned that rocks can have felted fibers, be masses or massives, and that many of them, despite appearance, are colorless. Disappointingly, the NHM Earth Galleries escalator no longer goes through a revolving Earth**; perhaps too many people were disoriented by it.

Best of all, I saw two dodos***, stuffed, on display in the bird gallery. They are far larger than I remember them being, a good half of my height, if not more.

* I am misleading. I do know [livejournal.com profile] taldragon and [livejournal.com profile] cynicaloptimist, both of whom were there, plus D-the-houseguest and, for the pub afterwards, C. as well. But there were a good 14 or so other people there whom I didn't know.
** I used to advertise this to my friends as the best free amusement park-style ride in London.
*** *plock plock*
There are 8 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] quen-elf.livejournal.com at 11:44pm on 04/03/2006
The dodos weren't actually real, they were models - I checked the labels, thinking it would be kind of ironic if the museum had casused the extinction ;) They were really cute though.

The owl with a pencil stuck in its head was a highlight for me...
owlfish: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:00am on 05/03/2006
Only a model! Nooooooo! I would have known had I stopped to look at them closely. I only ever saw them at high speed while passing from the main museum to the earth galleries and back again, but they made me so happy!

Perhaps I'll at least be able to see a dodo skeleton some day.
 
posted by [identity profile] tsutanai.livejournal.com at 12:41am on 05/03/2006
How is it that the rocks come to appear to have color, then?
 
posted by [identity profile] moon-custafer.livejournal.com at 12:50am on 05/03/2006
Maybe they mean that there's no actual pigment of that colour (ok, absorbing all light except light of that colur) in the rock, but the crystaline structure refracts the light to appear that colour, just as water appears blue in large quantities. I think some irridescent bird feathers work this way as well.
 
posted by [identity profile] mirrorshard.livejournal.com at 10:26am on 05/03/2006
This is how sugar works - refined (white) sugar is just the same as coarse (brown) sugar, it's just that the smaller grains refract light differently.

(*plock*)
 
posted by [identity profile] a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com at 04:02am on 05/03/2006
plock!

So clearly, not *all* historians take historical geology and astronomy to fulfill their science requirements and still avoid complicated maths!
owlfish: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:02am on 05/03/2006
I embraced the complicated maths instead.

I do like geology and astronomy though, even though I've done far more work on their histories (in grad school) than their practice.
 
posted by [identity profile] lazyknight.livejournal.com at 08:43am on 06/03/2006
*plock*

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