Oops that fell on my head

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell like to travel around Britain in a carbon lite way. On a recent round trip to Yorkshire we found a good way to break the monotony of motorway driving near Mrs Thatcher's old constituency of Grantham. This post is by Nicola, see more about energy efficiency in her most recent book, Homemade Kids: thrifty, creative and eco-friendly ways to raise children at http://www.homemadekids.co.uk/.



When bird poo lands on your head - observers laugh. The recipient feels slightly sick, then remembers that this sort of accident foretells a good luck day. When the young Isaac Newton sat under a tree and an apple fell on his head (or on to the book he couldn't take his nose out of being a bookish sort stuck at home to escape the plague in Cambridge) he began to work up a theory about the first, second and third laws of motion. Everyone knows these laws now. And who doesn't get gravity?

Fast lane
Driving up the A1 from London to Scotch Corner - this week I needed to drive 772 miles which seems a staggering distance (although it was only just over one tank of diesel, ie approx £65 of the rented VW Golf) - so I was desperate for a fun stop-off rather than a "services". The answer is at Grantham, the fascinating National Trust-run Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire which was the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. At the science centre Lola, 12, and I used a prism to see how red, green and yellow light beams become "white", we learnt that Isacc's dad (who died before he was born) couldn't write and how the boy Isaac built models of windmills and then powered them by mice! We also picniced near the famous apple tree (see pic above).



"His discoveries included revolutionary ideas in mathematics, optics, gravity and formulating the laws of motion. His theories and scientific methods underpin the world of science today."
NT guide book

Six fingers seen by people in a Sixt rent-a-car
Fascinatingly the house is also filled with anti-witch grafitti scratched into the plaster. It is at the front door, in the hallway, in the bedroom even. How strange that the man who did so much to make science accessible grew up in such a super-superstitious household. Or maybe that explains it? Lola and I drove off powered up by ideas that kept a conversation about how to make our own pet mice produce some renewable energy last many, many miles past York. And the fallen apple we took as a conversation piece is now tucked into my compost pile.

76-Second Travel Show: "Las Vegas: ScIeNce City"

Episode #008

F E A T U R I N G * 7 6 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

Includes interview with "inclinator expert" at the Luxor;
music courtesy of New York City's defunct TW-in-87.

Good trips often get a "moment" -- that single experience where, when the trip's reflected on, your thoughts fall first.

For my Vegas 2009 that will ever be the sidetrip to Valley of Fire State Park - a stunning scene resembling decayed nougats of red fudge poking out of the desert floor. The bearded rangers wouldn't talk on camera for us, but they pointed out the best place to hike: not just around the White Domes Trail, at the north end of a 11-mile scenic drive, but right up them.

Atop the White Domes' prehistoric snakeskin-style "walkway," I dangled my legs over the side of a cliff and took in the desert's complete silence. There I finally learned the key to appreciating Vegas: leaving it. Just outside town, you begin to appreciate how the nation's fastest-growing city could ever grow in a Mars-like landscape of formations created 150 million years ago.

People call Vegas "Sin City," but considering the inescapable questions of geography (among other sciences) that come up here, it's a "ScIeNce City" too. And the SSTS proudly presents the SIX BEST SCIENCE ATTRACTIONS:

CSN PLANETARIUM
Few know of this back on the Strip, but the College of Southern Nevada (CSN) opens its observatory on Friday and Saturday nights for a full-on glimpse of the stars. There's also astronaut ice cream. It's $6, beginning with an astronomy program at 7:30pm. Go by rental car. The taxi would run $75 minimum, one way.

ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM
Near the strip, this Smithsonian affiliate has a fairly defensive look at the state's involvement in atomic testing from 1961 to 1992. Plenty of videos with former employees talking about their role in the Cold War, and an interesting shop and Miss Atomic Bomb knick-knacks. You can also arrange tours of the blasted domes at the Atomic Testing Site, north of town from here.

NEON MUSEUM
All the glitter of Vegas' neon past has been collected in this non-profit museum. There are some objects to see around downtown's Fremont Street, but the real attraction is its "boneyard," an outdoor collection of rescued neon signs that can be seen by reservation only. Call 702-387-6366.

SPRINGS PRESERVE
Appearing in reality TV shows on occasion, we've noticed, this $250 million education complex features a "Desert Living Center" and two miles of (free) walking trails that piece together Nevada's cultural and natural history. Right in town.

VALLEY OF FIRE STATE PARK
It's certainly national-park-worthy and well worth bringing some food out for a fun meal in the retro picnic shelters, and taking a walk around Silica Dome, where Captain Kirk perishes in "Star Trek Generations," or so we think. Only pop and some snacks available, so pack ahead. Don't worry if you've forgotten a hat; they sell curious "Nevada State Park" hats for $15.

HOOVER DAM
Tours of the he New Deal 726-foot dam - packed between Lake Mead on one side and the distant hydroelectric plant on the other - are available, but it's worth even just a walk across. Drive to the Arizona side for free parking.

--> STTS scientific experiment: It took 38 seconds to enter the Hoover Dam gift shop and find the first souvenir that did some "dam" word play (t-shirt: "This is My Dam T-Shirt").

Science Week: Top 3 Achievements in "Augmented Travel"

"Augmented reality" (where the virtual and physical meet) is becoming the new reality, it seems. A couple months ago, Yelp’s Easter-egg app Monocle was “discovered” -- allowing one to shake an iPhone 3GS thrice, and see digital overlays of business listings/ratings through the iPhone camera. And options expanded last week with the new Motorola Google Android phone (which features apps for 10 Lonely Planet city guides).

This dosage of science into travel means a new way of searching out a good bagel or a B&B without bedbugs. Or finally joining Jay Maynard and living a life akin to the film “Tron,” but with better acting.

The buzzy notion of a sci-fi “augmented reality,” or “AR” as techies call it, actually dates from labs in the '30s, and the term was coined about two decades ago by the remarkably bearded Tom Caudell, while using head-mounted digital displays to wire aircraft at Boeing. Some reports say he did so in 1990, others 1992.

I emailed Mr Caudell to ask which was right, and he wrote back in 20 minutes:

“It was informally coined in late 1990 and first published in 1992. The name was handy to distinguish from the idea of full virtual reality. VR was catching on in a serious way at the time. And ‘augmented reality’ was handy to distinguish it from that idea.”

Considering “augment” is simply a fancy word for improvement, I thought I’d go back and cite three of the greatest “augmented travel” achievements that enable us to hit the road and explore for our own. With or without fancy headwear.

→ Apologies to trains, rail passes, post cards, guidebooks, compasses, roller suitcases and the almighty quick-dry pants.

TRAVEL MAPS
I can certainly testify that no feature in a guidebook gets more comments – some quite colorful – than its maps. They’re a staple in modern travel, but the notion of mapping out skies, sea currents, religious domains and conquests is ancient (eg the 16,000-year-old paintings at France’s Lascaux caves depict constellations, while a 9000-year-old Turkish map shows the plan of a Neolithic village). Early navigators weren’t keen on using them though. Chris Columbus, for example, used the currents and stars – maps, he said with a sigh, were “too virtual.”

Yet the first great travel map we know of – one that shows roads and services like hotels (!) – precedes him by a thousand years. The 5th-century AD Roman road map Tabula Peutingeriana connected the Roman empire from Europe to Asia. The original is MIA, but the Globe Museum at the Vienna’s Austrian National Liberary has a 12th-century copy that stretches 7m. (It’s rarely on view.)

“America,” meanwhile, made its debut on German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map “Universalis Cosmographia,” thought to be the first map of the planet . A thousand copies were made, but only one survives. In 2003, US Library of Congress paid the Wolfegg Castle in Germany US$10 million for it, and put it on view for all to see.

PASSPORTS
The first "travel papers" allowing safe passage across foreign lands date to Persian travelers 2500 years ago (per the Old Testament anyway), while the 15th-century English monarch King Henry V (who was “well educated,” yet “stern and ruthless” per the official website of the British Monarchy) is credited for promoting travel with the issue of real passports. (Though he may have just wanted easier clearance to claim France.)

In medieval times, the term came up either to allow the bearer to "pass" through the "porte" (city wall gate), or, if Louis XIV is to be believed, to travel from ports in ships ("passe ports"). By the late 19th century their use softened as railroads crossed Europe, though security in WWI brought them back for good, eventually evolving from fold-out papers with attached photos to booklets after WWII. (See an interesting Wanderlust article on its history.)

Passports changed travel by bureaucracizing it, but also enabling and inspiring it. Who hasn’t looked longingly at fellow travelers’ passports stamps, or been instantly revived after a globe-hopping flight with that swift, certain stamp from an immigration officer and the smell of freshly applied ink?

HIGHWAYS
A car only goes so far without roads, and – especially in the (still train-challenged) US – the rollout of the interstate during the Eisenhower administration, and highways like Route 66 during the Depression were travel game-changers. But trace those roads back – passing all the roadside billboards, truck stops and huge balls of twine built up along the way – and you’ll find your way to the Lincoln Highway, the country’s first trans-continental highway system, dating from 1913.

It wasn’t always a pretty sight. A one-way trip from New York to San Francisco, with stops in Chicago and Yellowstone and Yosemite, could take 30 days, if averaging 20 miles an hour, and camping outdoors on the plains on many nights.

The feisty Ernest McGaffey, of the Automobile Club of Southern California, wrote of its impact in a terrific 1922 New York Times article, and noted how it was one-fifth the cost of a European tour. He wrote, proudly, “Transcontinental motoring… has grown to IMPORTANT PROPORTIONS [my emphasis] during the last few years." I want that on a t-shirt.

Of the road's great draw, Mr McAffey timelessly testified:

“Nothing braces the mind and body as much as one of these catch-as-catch-can journeys where style is banished from the calendar. Sometimes you may lose sight of what day of the week or the month it is, and even the sun may be the main reliance as to what the time is. But you will soak your soul in the primitive draughts of sun, rain, wind and freedom.”

That’s augmented vision, Mr McAffey.

Tortoises and hares

Pete, Nicola, Lola, 10, and Nell, 7, like travelling around Britain on public transport (don’t laugh). We spent three happy months exploring during summer of 2007 but now we’re home, you can still join us for the occasional sightseeing - plus tips on how to shrink your carbon footprint. This post is from Nicola (pic of Darwin's house)

Suddenly we keep going to Kent. One week it’s for Lapland, the next Dickens’ world and now to tour Charles Darwin’s house. But what a trip – train just 18 minutes from London Bridge to Orpington (or start at Charing Cross), then jump on the R8 bus (which meets the train and is even platform signposted from the station) to be dropped directly at Darwin’s former home, Down House, near Downe Village.

Darwin is probably the world’s best known scientist. But he also loved his children (very unusual apparently for a Victorian pater) and his Mrs, Emma (also his cousin). And then there’s the Origin of Species, still incredibly readable and the debt we owe him for demystifying how all of us got here.

The English Nature exhibit shows his first passion was barnacles, explains that he once tipped worms on to the grand piano in the drawing room to try and work out if they could hear and he also seemed to be over-fond of carnivorous plants.

The girls wanted to live in his lovely house. Pete and I just had a storming fit of jealousy about how you could follow your desire to write, or think, or dream with zero interruptions (except from crowds of children) while the staff prepared meals, dusted, washed clothes and polished rooms. The visit was a great success – go now before the rush to mark the 150th centenary of the writing of the Origin of Species.

Other pluses include seeing Darwin’s writing desk, pacing the sand walk where he worked up his ideas, the shop, the tea rooms and all that stuff about finches and giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands.

Into the poison garden

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood whatever the weather. This post is from Lola

This is a cautionary story about Qhat (pronounced cat).

Once upon a time a man went into a poison garden and he saw qhat. He asked what's qhat doing here - in a cage - I've been feeding it to my mates and telling them it is harmless. So the man taking him around says it produces lung cancer, heart disease and makes your teeth fall out. So he had to tell his mates that they were going to get lung cancer, heart disease and their teeth would fall out.

Some other poisonous plants to watch out for - info learnt at Alnwick Garden - are deadly nightshade, ivy, hemlock, dock, stinging nettles, rhubarb, foxgloves, giant hogwee, mandrake and angel's trumpet.

Beatrix Potter's house

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola, Lola and Nell (pic is of Pete and Nell reading A Tale of Two Bad Mice by Potter's favourite tarn)

Nicola: Beatrix Potter was able to buy a house from the sales of her first book, Peter Rabbit. Pete and I are obscenely jealous! However visiting Hill Top Farm at Sawrey was a really good day out - we were very lucky to get in as there were mini bus loads of Japanese tourists who clearly adore the cutesy side of Potter's illustrations.

Our friend Tom Wakeford (who has recently lent us his house and camping field) is a bit miffed that everyone forgets that Beatrix Potter was an amazing biologist who made astonishing discoveries about lichens in 1896 which the scientific community refused to accept. She has of course been proved write, and Tom has a full chapter on Beatrix in his book Liaisons of Life: from hornworts to hippos how the unassuming microbe has driven evolution (John Wiley, 2001). Though it has been translated into Korean he still needs to sort out the Japanese translation. At Beatrix's old house (which she gifted to the National Trust) one of the guides told us that he was planning to learn Japanese this winter because of the number of Japanese visitors. Good for him.

Lola: "I love Beatrix Potter's books and I got given two for my birthday. I saw a photo of Beatrix Potter and she didn't look anything like she does in the film, Miss Potter. She was really ugly. All of her books (apart from Peter Rabbit) were written at Hill Top. Beatrix Potter would have had no light (electricity) and no running water. She had her desk by the window so she could get the light. It must have been really difficult -dark and cold - in the winter. We also went up to the tarn where Jeremy Fisher was created. We didn't see a frog, but me and Nell pretended to be Hunka Munka and Tom Thumb (from a Tale of Two Bad Mice) and we ran all around the rocks pretending it was our mousehole."

Nell: "Beatrix Potter was an amazing writer. One of her best books was the Tale of Samuel Whiskers which has lots of pictures of her house in it. I found the staircase, the red curtain, the fireplace, the rolling pin and that thing where you hang bowls and cups and spoons (a dish rack).

Make your own underfloor heating

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Lola and Nell

First get some sticklebricks, then you get two squares and one long, thin stick. Lock these together so there is a square at each end to make a column (see pic). We had eight altogether. Then you need to put your heating system in and flooring (but as Daddy said "that was more than his job's worth, or our's"...

Mummy told us to do this because we saw that the Romans used this method to make their underfloor heating. They called it hypocaust. In a cafe today we found a lady who really has underfloor heating. She said that she lay on the floor when she was really cold because with underfloor heating the floor stays really hot. That's because hot air rises.

Experimenting with life

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell want to travel the world with a difference. We hope to get a taste of many countries without adding to climate change (with needless emissions from aeroplanes) or having to waste hours of holiday time in airport terminals. We hope our adventures inspire you to take a Grand Tour of your neighbourhood. This post is from Nicola

Our first mission in Newcastle is to go to Chinatown and eat all that we can at one of the 60-dish, all day buffets on offer. After guzzling noodles, seaweed, egg fu yung, stir fried veg, bean sprouts and chips (!) there's a downpour so we decide to cancel the trip along the Quay, and then over Newcastle's fab millennium bridge to the Baltic art gallery. Instead we go to Life - a newish science show, very near the station, that is an absolute cracker. Here science is push and pull, repeat what you did, ask questions, try on, try out. Before the two talks given by young blokes in red aertex shirts (just like the ones staff wear at Woolies, see pic above) on the difference between humans and chimpanzees & stars in the night sky we have enough time to:

• find out that Karachi traffic police are likely to go deaf because the city is SO noisy


• stand under a heat lamp and feel the desert burn


• try and harpoon a seal


• brush dirt and stones off a skeleton


• walk like a gorrilla (with big gorrilla gloves)


• design a human and then watch it walk (mine lay down defeated by its pelvis)

The only drawback was that it was an expensive entry (#22 for a family) and the machine that ages you (as if I need one, that's what a mirror is for isn't it?) wasn't operating. Still, thanks to our famine-feeding at Lau's Buffet King we don't need any dinner money...