Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Smithsonian, Washington DC (Wed.10/24)


There's not much better than the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The first stop was the simulator rides. Shae, Kobe and I did the milder simulator ride taking us through the history of flights from WW1 to modern jets. Levi and Elan had the aggressive version where one fires and one pilots. They spent more time upside down (for real!) than not. They got one kill and augured themselves into the ground once. Just another day...

The Kid's interactive area gathered a good chunk of our time. I tried to explain the conservation of rotational momentum, so far so good, but I realized I really don't understand how gyro's work, much less can I explain it. Another grade or two and they'll be teaching me in all the subjects.

Zipping through the American History section... Here's the actual hat that Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night he was shot. Have I mentioned that he's a hero of mine?

Here's a picture of the boys with a couple heroes of theirs – C-3PO and R2-D2... sigh...

Three of the boys (the ones with the cold noses) in front of the infrared camera.


1 comment:

K Klapoetke said...

gyro scopes work because they can't decide which direction to fall down. when one part of it starts to fall, before the gyro can actually fall in that direction, the disk has moved to the falling part to a diffent point, and so essentially a gyro doesn't fall because when its spinning fast enough its effectively trying to fall in all directions at once, thus it stays level. the same is true for tops and even bicycle wheels and rolling coins!