Museums: Stuff White People Like

Saturday, I ventured on an escapade to visit the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The highlights of the day were the overpriced Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches we consumed (which were alright), and of course the Galileo Exhibit which was the focal point of the four-hour journey to Philly.

The morning started off with us meeting at 6:15 am so we could make the long trek to Pennsylvania, where we started off our day consuming assorted fruits and breakfast bars plus JUICE BOXES!
After sleeping for the first half of the trip, we made our way to a rest stop that had way too many people there. Normally you would assume a rest stop to have a bathroom, and a couple of vending machine, so weary drivers can stretch their legs and relieve themselves before heading back out on the road, well, this was like the Mecca of all rest stops. When one drives up, there was a GIANT food court, with rows of gas station pumps surrounding the building housing the food. Inside the main food court area was the largest assortment of off-key food vendors and a giant convenience store. After we had sufficiently rested, there was another two more hours of driving (or an hour, it was early), and we made it to Philadelphia where we stopped at some place to have lunch. This place was a treasure trove of any foodstuffs you could imagine with cuisine ranging from sushi and assorted deserts to Philly Cheesesteaks and Salads. And after that we headed to the Franklin Institute to view the exhibit.

When giving an honest review about the exhibit, one would say it was very interesting, yet extremely repetitive. Not being derogatory in the sense, but the exhibit showcased numerous items of the same effect. There were numerous compositions written in Latin displayed along with a plethora of compasses and there were also a lot of other brass tools used to determine positions of stars. I’m not saying that theses weren’t interesting to look at, but once you’ve seen 4 of them, the other 16 just don’t seem to have the same effect. One part I did enjoy was seeing (what I assume to be) the actual copy of Sidereus Nuncius. I enjoyed reading it and it was very interesting to see the actual copy (again, or what I assumed to be the actual copy). Another part of the exhibit I enjoyed was seeing one of the two surviving Galilean telescopes. It was a lot bigger than I imagined it to be, and surprisingly still in a decent condition, considering the age of it. It was also interesting to call the telephone number listed underneath the glass case and listen to interesting facts and tidbits of information like what exactly the telescope was constructed out of, and other miscellaneous facts about it. In another part of the exhibit was a hands-on learning portion, where we got to learn about optics using mirrors and lenses, and observed the refraction of light in a prism. Also there were (what I hope to be) Galileo’s actual drawings of his observations of the moon, which were amazing compared to my pathetic sketches.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38332 Stargazing Tips

Overall the day was pretty good, but from a sociological aspect, the experience at the museum was quite interesting. I observed numerous people become QUITE intrigued by the exhibit. It was just like stuff white people like. I observed people molest the glass cases trying to get the best view possible of whatever they were looking at. I would also observe them sprouting out random facts, half of which were incorrect facts about astronomy and Galileo. What was even funnier, was the fact that half of the time, they were standing next to a banner that gave the correct information of whatever they were trying to say, and if these people were to just take them time to read the exhibit that fascinated them so much, they would have probably gotten some knowledge out of it.

But the Icing on the cake was watching people repeatedly crawl on the floor trying to look through Galileo’s telescope. One with any logical reasoning would know that looking though a telescope positioned at the wall would yield no results, yet one man in particular would repeatedly (4 times) crawl on the ground and press his face up to the glass (which was separated by at least 5 to 7 cm from the eyepiece) and try and comment on how it “makes everything look so big”. After making this comment, the man then stands up, goes around to the other side of the telescope and looks down from the top of the telescope and desperately tries to see something. This went for a good 18 minutes (yes I did time it) until he was satisfied and moved on to the next glass case…where he repeated the same scrutiny that the telescope received.

Since that experience made me chuckle, I will call the day a success, and the fact that there was an actual telescope all the way from Firenze (Florence), Italia (Italy). I think that since this is probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it made it all the much better.