Friday, 30 April 2010

Barcelona First Day

Fantastic flight from Manchester to Barcelona with Monarch airline. It took about 2 hours to get to Barcelona, here are some pictures from the plane of the Pyrénnées:



Once arrived at the Princess Hotel, we went out to get some food and found a supermarket in a shopping centre. We got some good wine for about 2€ and dry meat and saussages with bread for dinner. Later in the evening, while watching a film, a swallow hit the window and fell on a little balcony just outside the bedroom.
Luckily, in the morning it was gone! What was it thinking?! They are not really meant to be flying during night time!

We are on the 25th floor of the Hotel (which has 26 floors) with a wonderful view on Barcelona! We can even see the cathedral! And a little bit of the sea. Iwould recommend anyone to book this hotel! It also has a swimming pool on the 3rd flood (heated, outside on a balcony!)


Tuesday, 13 April 2010

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - Art Gallery

There was an exposition on different tribes of the world:






This was the modern art side, very interesting!
The stings of metal looked dipersed from the sides and you couldn't tell it had a human shape.
This was a wheel spinning with different men inside attached to it and with a strobe light. In the end, you could only see one man running with arms and legs moving...easy to make but still amazing to look at!

One of the eye of the robot had a camera built in, when you went on the side you could see the display on a screen built in the brain.

These are examples of Art and Microbiology



This is my personal tutor Prof Joanna Verran. There were shapes of stones that you could hold and if you found the right position they would fit with the shape of your body when you hugged it.
This was a box making different sounds by the way you moved your hand in it (on the picture is Kath, one of my supervisors).

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Here are a few photos of another museum we visited there:







They already had a great idea of how to represent men at the time!


Wednesday, 7 April 2010

3rd Day in Cambridge: Whipple Museum of the History of Science

It is not a very big museum but I took pictures of everything there were in it! This first picture shows you the overview of the room, there is a second one on the right and another floor upstairs.




It shows the history of different things such as microscops...

...or calculators, which was quite funny because I had no idea what the first calculator looked like.
Here some instruments of measurements.
We mainly went there because of these. The glass models of fungi in the pictures were all made by Dr. W. A. R. Dillon Weston of Cambridge University between 1936 and his death in 1953. As well as being an inventive way of showing farmers the structure of fungi that are normally only visible using a microscope, the models are themselves particularly beautiful. The Dillon Weaton models can be divided into two different types. The majority are of microsopicfungi that are a cause of disease in plants, modelled at a magnification of between 20-600 times. This type was generally made in clear, uncoloured glass and represent transparent or hyaline fungi. However, coloured glass where necessary, such as for the spores. These models stand without a base on their mycelium and are extremely fragile.

The other type of model represents larger fungi, vegetables undergoing fungal parasitism or seedling infection. Some of these models approximate the natural dimensions of the fungi, whilst others are slightly reduced in size. These are all made from opaque coloured glass and are robust than the transparent models.

Only on other collection of glass fungi models is known to exist, as part of the Blaschka collection in the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.



That's him, not a very good picture because of the reflection but we can see him while he is making one of them.

Dr. W. A. R. Dillon Weston spent all of his professional life in Cambridge. After obtaning his degree in Natural Sciences at St. Cathatine's College, Dr. Dillon Weston gained employment as a mycologist (an expert in the study of fungi) at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Ministry Pathologists at that time were stationed at universities, where teaching and supervision of students were inculded as part of their duties.

He began making models in glass, mostly of plant disease fungi, in 1936. Simple tools were used to make the models: piers, a Bunsen burner and imported glass from Czechoslovakia. The majority were made during the early hours of the morning at his home, Howe Farm in Cambridge. However, as Dr. Dillon Weston became more enthusiastic about his hobby, he also produced some delicate pieces during summer vacations with his family to Frinton-on-Sea between 1937-1939. These fragile models then had to make a careful journey back to Cambridge by car.

Dr. Dillon Weston's model making declined during the war years, as he became progressively busier. He was appointed as Principal Plant Pathologist for the Eastern Province of the National Agricultural Advisory Service in 1946. Tragically, Dr. Dillon Weston died suddenly of a heart attack in 1953, aged only 54.






























This is an actual clock which is rather odd to look at but very intersting when it changes of minutes or hours. You can actually see all the details of the mechanism.







These are horses dentals.

A little bit scary...



















This is the collection of the museum that you can see upstairs: