Cambridge Science Festival
May. 2nd, 2007 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI only managed to do some things this weekend, rather than through the week as I'd hoped. Best stuff:
-Heard a little music and got to gawk at some musical sculptures by Viktor Lois. I didn't hear but got to see one that included much of a bike and the guts of at least three typewriters, among other things.
-Saw the TechnoArt Bike, which was very pretty. I can totally imagine dressing it up with interesting lighting and riding it at night.
-Saw the plans and the kitchen tabletop of MIT's solar decathlon entry. The table top is solid, able to have onions cut on it or a ringed hand hit it, and is also a computer monitor that is usable by touch (when sitting on the sensor pad) by up to four people at once. I saw how it could display all the house's energy use, or the floor plans (using cool zooms activated by different kinds of touch), and a fun bubble-popping game I wanted to play.
edit, 5/04 1300
-How could I have forgotten the model trains?! There's a huge set-up, with lots of identifiable Boston buildings. Trains! Miniatures! Very fun.
/edit
-Walked the human genome trail set up from Kendall to Harvard. I read about chromosomes 1-22 plus X and Y. This was ok, but would have been better with more information at each stop (there was far too much area used for boilerplate). Good to be out and about, though.
-Walked the climate trail set up on Sunday by the Swiss consulate. It started at the consulate, so I finally got to see the inside, which is all glass and metal and light wood (very much FJ!!), and read some of the many posters about Euler. The rest of the tour meandered over to Harvard, then down to the river. A couple of stops had researchers with posters set up (about global warming in general, greenhouse gases, glacial melt in South America, and so on), and some were showing solutions used around the university, ranging from the solar light post to semi-underground Pusey library to Harvard's energy plant on
Blackstone Street, which has a number of buildings and landscaping recently redone in very green ways. 99% of what was taken out was reused or recycled (even the parking lot that was dug up), and there were a lot of thoughtful decisions made about design and furnishings, ranging from bamboo floors without polish to carpets and paints that don't off-gas to making sure there's natural light available to everyone.
They use the steam plant for heating, and a geothermal sink to cool off. We saw the top of the sink: it looks just like a manhole cover in the parking lot, except that it goes down 1500 feet. They've set up a way to deal with the water runoff from the one parking lot they kept, filtering it down through a man-made layered pool before putting it into the Charles.
The guy doing the presentation was obviously enthusiastic to show off his building, and very open to questions. Apparently geothermal sinks are not yet used much for buildings larger than individual homes, and the technology doesn't scale automatically, so they've learned a lot (such as: 1500 feet down the water is saline, which means additional problems to solve), which will be used as they transform the Allston campus.
I could've stayed and asked lots more questions, but there were more stops on the tour.
I didn't do the evolutionary timeline walk along Cambridge St. (no time, plus I didn't find the "map" until today); I might use the map next time I plan to walk the length of the street.
-Heard a little music and got to gawk at some musical sculptures by Viktor Lois. I didn't hear but got to see one that included much of a bike and the guts of at least three typewriters, among other things.
-Saw the TechnoArt Bike, which was very pretty. I can totally imagine dressing it up with interesting lighting and riding it at night.
-Saw the plans and the kitchen tabletop of MIT's solar decathlon entry. The table top is solid, able to have onions cut on it or a ringed hand hit it, and is also a computer monitor that is usable by touch (when sitting on the sensor pad) by up to four people at once. I saw how it could display all the house's energy use, or the floor plans (using cool zooms activated by different kinds of touch), and a fun bubble-popping game I wanted to play.
edit, 5/04 1300
-How could I have forgotten the model trains?! There's a huge set-up, with lots of identifiable Boston buildings. Trains! Miniatures! Very fun.
/edit
-Walked the human genome trail set up from Kendall to Harvard. I read about chromosomes 1-22 plus X and Y. This was ok, but would have been better with more information at each stop (there was far too much area used for boilerplate). Good to be out and about, though.
-Walked the climate trail set up on Sunday by the Swiss consulate. It started at the consulate, so I finally got to see the inside, which is all glass and metal and light wood (very much FJ!!), and read some of the many posters about Euler. The rest of the tour meandered over to Harvard, then down to the river. A couple of stops had researchers with posters set up (about global warming in general, greenhouse gases, glacial melt in South America, and so on), and some were showing solutions used around the university, ranging from the solar light post to semi-underground Pusey library to Harvard's energy plant on
Blackstone Street, which has a number of buildings and landscaping recently redone in very green ways. 99% of what was taken out was reused or recycled (even the parking lot that was dug up), and there were a lot of thoughtful decisions made about design and furnishings, ranging from bamboo floors without polish to carpets and paints that don't off-gas to making sure there's natural light available to everyone.
They use the steam plant for heating, and a geothermal sink to cool off. We saw the top of the sink: it looks just like a manhole cover in the parking lot, except that it goes down 1500 feet. They've set up a way to deal with the water runoff from the one parking lot they kept, filtering it down through a man-made layered pool before putting it into the Charles.
The guy doing the presentation was obviously enthusiastic to show off his building, and very open to questions. Apparently geothermal sinks are not yet used much for buildings larger than individual homes, and the technology doesn't scale automatically, so they've learned a lot (such as: 1500 feet down the water is saline, which means additional problems to solve), which will be used as they transform the Allston campus.
I could've stayed and asked lots more questions, but there were more stops on the tour.
I didn't do the evolutionary timeline walk along Cambridge St. (no time, plus I didn't find the "map" until today); I might use the map next time I plan to walk the length of the street.