We were treated to another great breakfast this morning courtesy of Sue, before venturing into Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry. Not knowing the public transport system well, we took a train to a rough looking neighbourhood 2 miles from the Museum, and made hastily towards the large buildings of Chicago medical school out of the rough area.
The museum looked grand from the outside, and inside was set over three main levels. We luckily gained free entry thanks to our military ID, saving us $20 each. The usual attractions you expect from a science museum were dotted around; a tornado simulator, small science demonstrations of interference and various physical principles. I got a little carried away with the interference demonstration using a combination of transducers, which is what happens when you spend a year studying marine acoustics. Initially though we were drawn to their Spitfire and Stuka dive bomber suspended from the ceiling, the first of either aircraft I have seen.
We looked at a large model train set they had set us, with depictions of Seattle, the Rockies, the Great Plains and Chicago. Not quite to scale, they seemed to skip a good thousand miles of wheat between the cities!
Other notable exhibits included a collection of foetuses collected in the 1930's with consent following unfortunate accidents, set in a chronology of the developmental stages. It was fascinating visualise the development of a baby. Another part of this exhibit had technological innovations in medicine and anatomy, such as cochlear implants, a bionic arm controlled by the mind, and a heart valve grown in the laboratory, pumping away in the corner! A visualisation of the Periodic Table with examples of all the elements (the safe ones at least!) and their uses was excellent to browse through. A few other highlights were a series of functional engines spanning from the relatively modern to the Ancient Greeks, a large aviation exhibit and a bicycle exhibit with the original precursor to the bicycle, a large wooden framed, steel rimmed bone rattling contraption.
By far the pinnacle of the exhibits though was the U-boat on display. U505 was captured by USS Guadalcanal and it's task force during the Second World War yielding the Americans important enigma codebooks and machines. The capture was kept a secret until after the war, a remarkable feat. We were able to walk around and under the boat, and had a brief but very insightful tour inside. It was larger than we expected, although certainly no Ritz inside for the crew of 59. On the outside there were still large holes in the conning tower courtesy of the US task force that captured it, fro .50 calibre, 20mm and 40mm armaments. One crew member was killed in the capture, but the rest were taken alive and failed to scuttle the vessel. An acoustic torpedo was laid out next to the submarine, which gave me another opportunity to get excited about marine acoustic applications. A couple of enigma machines were on display, which I have never seen before and provided the icing on the cake. An excellent exhibit all around.
Ceri treated us all to a meal after the museum, at a nice pub style restaurant. It was nice to sit down for a proper dinner with a glass of wine and flowing conversation for the evening before we returned on the train to Aurora.
No comments:
Post a Comment