Today was our first full day in London. We had arranged with Laurence Stales for a guided science  tour of London. Laurence has a web site we found  (https://www.laurenceswalks.co.uk/) that we found online. We corresponded with him before the trip and he arranged the most wonderful 6 hour ‘back streets of science’ tour. It was fantastic. Laurence is a learned, funny, friendly and articulate interpreter of science  He’s a mechanical engineer, a  published author and an archivist in the Royal Institution. .  The perfect English science guy !

 

We woke early-ish and took the tube to a shopping center opposite St. Pauls church and met up with Laurence

We learned about how Robert Hooke figured out the catenary equations that allowed Hooke in 1670 to design the proper  curvature to allow St. Pauls dome to be built. (the catnery’s are related to those weird hyperbolic functions you never used on your calculator 🙂  Hooke was a weird dude.. He was so secretive that he encoded the solution to the catenary solution he found as and anagram

abcccddeeeeefggiiiiiiiillmmmmnnnnnooprrsssttttttuuuuuuuux.

which was later decrypted into the latin as 

Ut pendet continuum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum inversum

which translated to  english is

As hangs a flexible cable so, inverted, stand the touching pieces of an arch.
 
Of course 🙂 

Hooke did so many things.. he helped remap London after the great fire of 1666.. he invented the law of a springs force (still called Hookes law) .. /;  the was the head of the Royal Society…… .. When his arch Rival Sir Issac Newton took over the Royal Society, ehe had all pictures of Hooke removed….   We visited the Royal Society.. which was not much to see.. then saw it’s older more picturesque location. I enjoyed that  because the ROyal Society is the model for the US National Academy that I’m a. member of. 

 

 

We learned all this by 11 AM !

We spent the rest of the day exploring London science with Laurences expert help.   We stopped by THe brides church, Samuel Johnson (first official Eeglish lexicographer) . Kings College London (where3 I saw my freind and former bosses Harriett’s picture as one of the celebrated alums !!!

Then lunch at the Royal Society…. including a lunch at their very nice cafeteria (actually .. I think anyone can eat there.. but it felt special with lLaurence 🙂 

From there we walked a bit through the pop and circumstance of the recent coronation…  London was still in top form !

We walked to the Royal Instittion … which was my favorite thing of the day. Laurence is a. member and an archivist there. His knowledge of the place helped us reallly take in the place… 

The building is beutiful.. there4’s a model of  the physicists Michael Farady,. one of the most famous lumns.. note his hand nt the form of the right hand rule !

Touring the place with Laurence was amazing.   

We loved the art in the gallery.. many famous scientists represented here.. including painings of the famous ‘christmas lectures’.. which still happen to this day ! 

Note here that Lord Kelvin seems to be ‘resting his eyes’

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We got to visit the presentation room where so many famous sceintists have spoken.. and so many sciene talks for the public have been held. Laurnece told us that there are several talks. every month for the public on topics related to sceince… and that the christmas shows are still produced there and shown recorded on BB. It was an honor to visit that room !

 

 

From there we went into the basement where We saw equipment from some. of the most famous scientists in history :

• Dewer’s Dewer for holding super cold  liquified gases
• Gas samples purified by Humphyy Davies (a notorious Nitrous Oxide lover) .. 
• Bragg’s optical instruments
• Rayleighs spectrometer
• Thompsons particle devices. 
• Tyndall’s work on  why the sky is blue
• And.. best of all… Michael Faradays laboratory.. which has been preserved to this day thanks to a happy accident of architecture !
  
  
  

then it was time to say goodbye to Laurence. It had been such an excellent day. We highly (!!!) recommend you meet up with Laurence when you are next in london  by way of https://www.laurenceswalks.co.uk/about-me

That was already a very full day.. but it wasn’t over by a long shot ! We tube the tube back to the house. Took a short rest.. then began a mile walk to Santa Maria… a pizza place chosen by Diane’s distant cousin Massimo..  We’d made connection with Massimo by way of Diane’s brother Steve who’s done extensive genealogical research on both sides of his and Diane’s family (and his wife’s family as well) .   Steve had reached out to Massimo several years ago by mail after he and his wife Gulia had moved from Italy to England.  .. Steve lost track of Mssimo a couple of years ago… . I was able to reconnect with Massimo  on Linkedin  and we’d made a plan to meet up when we were in London. Massimo had chosen the Santa Maria Pizzaria because.. he and Gulia felt it was thepest aNapolese style pizza outsode of Naploi… Massimo said it was even better than the pizza in Napoli !

We got to Santa Maria first.. then Massimo and Gulia showed up. It was so fun meeting them !.. they are both so nice and freindly..We ordered and started into our story…   Diane and I are traveling  to Italy in September with our close friends Linda and David. Our plan is to visit the towns of the places where Dianes grandparents are from in Abruzzo and and Lindas grandmother is from in Calabria..

Our goal tonight.. aside from meeting a  wonderful new relative.. was to find out things and people to see In Abruzzo. We are specifically interested in  proving or disproving a long told family story of how Dianes grandmother came to the US

Massimo’s last name is Ruano.. his grandfather was was the brother of DIane’s grandmothers mother. Massimo and his family are from the small town of Bucchianico. in the Abruzzo region of Italy.. It’s the same town that  Diane’s Grandmother Pierina  and Grandfather Constantine  were from.  The history we know is that Dianes Grandfather came over to Binghamton NY by ship in the `1920’s . He married Teresa Mancini who was also from Bucchianico. .. Constantino and Teresa had 3 children before Teresa  sadly died of pneumonia. After a while in 1930 , Constantino sailed back to Italy to find a new wife to help him raise  the small kids, (Dieane’s aunts Toni, Marie and Armond) . Teresa’s parents actually helped Constantino find his new wife, Pierina. The family lore is that Pierina’s parents Stefano and Anna were eager to Get Pierina married off because she had two suitors and oen had killed the other .. perhaps in a duel. 

No one who could verify this story is still alive in this country, so we’re hopign to get tot he bottom of it when we visit…    Massimo was pretty sure that the story could not be true… but he picked up his phone and called his father back in  Bucchianico.. THey strarted speakign Italian… and when Massimo hung up.. he told us his dad had confirmed that when he’d been a kid, he’d heard the story.. thoguyh it happened before he was born.. It was an amazing moment..

Now we’re planning on visiting Massimo’s dad and his mom on our trop. Neither speaks english.. but by luck, Massimo’s mom also speaks German.. so I should be able to communicate ok.. It will eb so fun to learn more.. !!!I

It was a great evening with Massimo and Gulia.. they are such wonderful people..w e’re very glad to be connected to them !

We said goodbye and walked home…. processing all we’d heard…
.. what a great day !

nite all, nite sam 
-me

Preface:
Those of you reading this (if anyone does 🙂   will realize by now that I can get quite a few days behind before writing. I really enjoy looking back over the previous days (or weeks) and reflecting on what happened. I’m sitting down now trying to capture our first day in London and realize that even with a half day I’m sorting through 259 pictures.. It’s gonna take soem time catching up.. but I love doing it !

We got to London about 6:30 AM after a great sleep on the plane (how often does that really happen ? ) … Gabe’s plane landed just a few minutes later and we met up in Baggage.. so far so good !

 

We took the Tube to town  , grabbed a bite in Regents park.. then wandered over to the Natural History Museum and checked our bags. This was stop 1 on our ‘Science Obscura’ trip. It was an idea Gabe had come up with to visit places of scientific interest between his field (biochemistry) and  DIane and my fields (Physics and Engineering). With eh help of a zillion google searches, webstes, youtube and eventually ChaptGPT we came up with he following Itinerary.. (which in hindsight worked very. very well !)

Anyway.. Where was I ? … Oh.. Regents park and the Natural History museum  by way of Albert Hall and the Albert Statue

We dropped our bags at the Natural History Museum because they had a bag drop.. but headed straight  to the London Science Museum.. We could have spent 2 days just there.. Daleks, Huge steam engines, Medical oddities..   SOem great Watson and Crick Memorobilia !

Here’s the setup liek the one she used

The medical stuff  in the Welcomme Collection was really interesting… Old emdicual devices, medical fakes, patent medicines

 

This one  is a primitive blood pressure measurement device that looks s strangely like something billy and I worked on during the pandemic.. (You’ll hear about that soon here )

They even had one of Van Loevenhoek’s original microscopes !

From there it was time  to uber to our sweet Airbnb down in Chelsea.. We got there , dropped our stuff.. then walked back to the museums.. We went by ROsiland Franklins old home

Then stopped into a sweet tea shop for a ‘sceince cream tea’.. They gave us little vials and eyedroppers to do a yummy’ experiment along with the cream tea fixings.. very vute !

Then back to the Science Museum to see clocks, computing machines and more medical gizmos

We saw one of the German Enigma encoding machines.. a prelude ot our visit to Blechlyw On Friday

The museum closed at 5:30.. so we headed out to meet our good  friend Ian who’s doing his MBA here. We went to a toney Indian place.. yummy and good fun !

then a nice long walk around Regents park around sunset

Then a long walk back home for much needed sleep.. 

A great first day to our London Sceince Safari !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Today was a travel day .. diane and I left home about 11 for our trip to meet Gabe in England then on to Portugal for Brit and Brans wedding .. It was nice to be on vacation..   Good Bye VT for a little while !

Pretty nice travel day.. 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Busy day at work as I get ready to be out for almost two weeks. Shannon was dog sitting our coworker Chips dog.. nice to have a dog around work !

This evening I gave a long postponed talk on AI to a group from Wake Robin Community. Wake Robin is a ‘life plan’ community where folks can live out the rest of your lives. Its an amazing place with many very active seniors… they host tons of talk and outings… and I was honored to be asked to lead a conversation on AI.. AI’s a topic on everyones mind these days. I had a nice dinner with my host Joyce and some of her friends before the talk.

 

The talk was well attended (maybe 160 people) and was really fun.. lots of good questions and comments.  Many of the folks in the room had been experimenting with ChatGPT . which seems to be a very good gateway for people to learn both the power and potential concerns associated with AI. 

here are a few demo pics I took from the talk.

The talk was well received…. had to zip home because we’re leaving for our trip tomorrow !

Nite all, nite sam

-me