Univ of Leiden, 5DEC99; AP's Sci Odyssey of Europe
Archimedes Plutonium
These are my last 3 days of my tour. And the last of my
Eurail train log-in entries. I am glad I kept a log-in diary of
my Eurail itinerary because in the future when my memory
gets fading I can always look up the details. And I am sure
that in the future, others will do a AP Sci Odyssey tour
of Europe and will try to follow the exact route that I
followed. I kept a brisk pace and so some of these future
followers of my path will not be able to keep up the
travel pace. But that is alright because everyone is
different and should find a tour plan that is comfortable
to them.
The last of my Eurail log-in entries.
04/12 19:15 Vienna to Leiden arriv 09:40
05/12 20:05 Amsterdam to Basel-Zurich arriv 08:00
06/12 11:34 Zurich to Geneva arriv 14:34
06/12 17:49 Geneva to Basel arriv 20:39
06/12 23:25 Basel to Amsterdam arriv 08:57
07/12 09:12 Amsterdam CS to Leiden 09:50 to Den Haag to Rotterdam
07/12 13:11 Rotterdam to Hoek van Holland to Harwich England
Stena Lines cancelled the 16:05 ferry and sent me along with
most of the other passengers to Brussels suid midi with Eurostar
through the Chunnel
--- quoting from my travel notes ---
Asking German train passengers what the Arz in Arzberg means.
Arzberg was my birthplace. The "arz" can mean two things. One,
the sap of trees or secondly, metal melting, molten metal. So, it
appears that some reincarnation knowledge on this trip is coming
to me. I have a passion and love of trees and horticulture and the
molten metal is obvious association to plutonium.
This morning about 09:30 Sunday 5DEC99 seeing the Dutch countryside
with water canals everywhere and farmland with water canal runoff makes
me think that all land in Holland is soaking wet. Great for grasses and
lush
green, a deep green color. Dutch must be worried about rising sea level
for it would impact them perhaps the most. Although I did remember that
the water level in Venice was awfully high. It seems as though my cold
virus is developing for the worst. So I better buy a large sack of
oranges
or tangerines as soon as possible. I am looking at the gigantic Ajax
Amsterdam sports coliseum from my train window. Soon will be in
Amsterdam and find out where the Univ of Leiden is located. Looks as
though I will have a spot of sunshine with overcast cloudy sky.
I am on a train with full sunlight staring me in the face as of 10:45
Sunday on my way from Amsterdam to Leiden. And at the
information buro in Amsterdam they said everything at the Uni was
closed. Which is no different from other European Uni. And the
thought occurred to me that since in the USA most Uni are open
for some hours both on Satur and Sunday that this was a bit of
Puritanism in the USA. One of the reasons that the Puritans
escaped Europe is because of the silly notion that coupon-saving
by observing Sundays is not God's way but rather like the Puritans,
Sunday or Xmass day are great days to start new projects or to
get things done. And in the case of Universities, science and
science libraries should observe no day of rest but open 7 days
per week and as many hours as feasible.
I am walking the streets of Leiden Holland a sunny 5DEC99 day
although brisk not too cold to write on a bench. I am waiting for the
Boerhaave Museum to open at 12:00 and deciding whether I have enough
time to see Arzberg and Sonnenberg Germany and Newton's apple
orchard in Lincolnshire and still meet my airflight home.
I am looking at the canal water it looks motionless. If there is any
water movement, it is slight. Unlike Venice where I can see water
motion. And I walk on the grasslands surrounding these Dutch
canals and just what I expected, water soaked soil. The soil here
I would imagine is as water soaked as the Olympic rain forests of
Washington state and Oregon only the soil here in Holland needs
not rain to be wet. Almost like a controlled swamp drainage. I
suppose a lot of plants would grow well in such a water soaked
soil, especially annual food crops.
And with the sun out, I was thinking that in summertime how many
countries I could see in just one day with 10 hours of
afternoon sunlight.
In the Boerhaave learned for the first time about Cosmas and
Damian brothers who travelled Asia Minor treating the sick. Selfless
ones for not hear of any reward. In about 300 AD they were martyred.
Now they are the patron saints of doctors and pharmacists.
Instrument makers from the "low countries" such as Arsenius 1572.
Astrolabe Coignet 1601. Louvain workshop of Gemma Frisius. I think
I answered my own question as to why Brahe was in Hven because he
was close to the instrument makers of Europe.
First telescopes in about 1608 Christiaan Huygens
--- quoting snippets from inside the Boerhaave Museum ---
Archimedes distinguished 5 "simple machines" which occur in
many combinations in mechanics. These are: lever, inclined
plane, wedge, screw and wheel.
In 1746 the chance invention by prof. Petrus van Musschenbroek
of the Leyden jar, the forerunner of the condenser, led to a
short-lived but intense interest in electrostatics. Electricity
was produced by friction. A glass sphere or disc was rotated
against a pad, and the 'electrical matter' released in the glass
was tapped a little further on.
Battery of four Leyden jars 1750-1800
In the 17th century, having broken free from Spanish domination,
the Republic of the United Netherlands flourished as never before.
The climate of intellectual freedom also encouraged the development
of science. The newly-founded universities attracted scholars and
students from many countries. The publishers' presses were
never still, working for the whole of Europe.
New Worlds became accessible. Overseas trade brought unkown
flora and fauna in its wake. The map of heaven and earth was
transformed. The microscope and the telescope, both invented
around 1600 opened up new vistas.
Precision instruments gained a permanent place in scientific
research, but also in applied subjects such as surveying. The
multi-faceted work of Christiaan Huygens, the Netherlands'
greatest scientist, is the best illustration of this.
Anton van Leeuwenhoek 1632-1723 examined pus, ditch water,
insects, blood, etc
Jan Swammerdam 1637-1680 examined anatomy of insects
Plaster cast 3-dimensional model of thermodynamic variables
of temperature, pressure, energy
Van der Waals proposed his equation in his thesis in 1873
H A Lorentz and P. Zeeman.. van der Waals.. H.Kamerlingh
Onnes.. Onnes created a veritable research factory in Leiden,
where the lowest possible temperatures were achieved..
culminating in the liquefying of helium at -269 degrees C..
Laboratory research was characteristic of the increasing
specialization in science. If the figure of the universal
scientist had already disappeared, around 1900 physics
too divided up into various specialisms.
--- end quoting snippets inside the Boerhaave Museum ---
After having visited the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden of
famous Univ of Leiden scientists such as Huygens, Onnes,
Leewenhoek, van der Waals, Petrus van Musschenbroek et al.
Analogy to repeating in blocks that on my USA tour I
stopped in at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and
learned somewhat of the history of fission physics and
Fermi and here in Leiden Univ at Boerhaave is a analogous
repeat of that experience only with famous Dutch
scientists. On this day of 5DEC99 Sunday, I spent
3.5 hours from 12:00 to 15:30 at the Boerhaave. There
are many things to do with hands on demonstrations, not
only looking and reading. And one could say that the Boerhaave
is the Smithsonian of Holland. (I wonder why Holland has so
many names for itself, there is Dutch and there is Holland
and there is Netherlands. And none of them look related.)
Anyway, both science museums of Smithsonian and Boerhaave
need to be enlarged and expanded. Other equipment of these
famous Dutch scientists can be seen in THE MECHANICAL
UNIVERSE series.
And after the Boerhaave my mind set to thinking that the
Atom Totality makes the microscope the same as the telescope
since the cosmos is the last electron shell of a single atom.
And all atoms are microscopic and so the cosmic distances
are distances of the last 6 electrons of 231Pu.
And the telescope and microscope were discovered/invented
at roughly the same time, approx 1600. With the Atom
Totality theory the discovery of the microscope and
telescope would be important because of patterns in
history since history is superdetermined. But to other
theories of the universe such as the Steady State
or the Big Bang they could care less when the microscope
and telescope were invented. Could we find the
single person who discovered the microscope and a single
person who discovered the telescope? Apparently both
were discovered independently. It is my understanding
that Galileo is given credit for discovering the telescope
only I suspect he is given the credit simply because he
improved upon an invention already made by another.
And let me offer a science history conjecture. That the
discovery or invention of both the telescope and microscope
were done in the very same year. This is a special year in the
history of science. Perhaps this special year is the year 1600
exactly. In an Atom Totality Universe, all of human history is
a physics experiment itself and is patterned. Thus, the
invention of the telescope and microscope may have been a
science-history-convergence, that both of these tools of
science would come into existence in the very same year,
both telescope and microscope have similarities and differences,
and two different men in different countries discovered
them. But in an Atom Totality, history is patterned and the
similarities between telescope and microscope would make it
strange if they were discovered/invented in different years.
So I make the conjecture that the telescope and microscope
were discovered in the exact same year and by two different
men of different countries.
And the Boerhaave shows another interesting aspect in the
mixing or combining of physics with medicine biology and I
have noticed this desire of mixing these two sciences in
Darmstadt GSI where the funding of leading cutting edge
technology in physics is wanting of a practical application
and so medicine is the first choice, in order to keep the
physics funding alive and healthy for it is easier to
explain to the general public the need for research due to
its medical application.
And as I offer a conjecture for the invention/discovery
of the microscope and telescope as having occurred exactly
in the same year, let me offer another conjecture more
dazzling perhaps than the first. That discoveries in physics
are linked to biology, and since the microscope is the same
as the telescope in an Atom Totality theory that physics is
the same as biology where one can make an equivalence
relationship microscope/telescope : : biology/physics.
I often wrote previously that I thought physics compared to
biology was predominately
the particle view of nature and biology predominately the wave
view of nature. I have to think some more about the above
for I believe it will be productive.
My Europe tour is about ended and I have just two more days,
but I want to make a final stop
at Newton's apple farm and then the Royal Institute in London
for Faraday and Maxwell. I missed seeing many of the famous
science sites of Eastern Europe such as Copernicus in Poland
and Gregor Mendel in Brno (Brunn) and Kepler and Brahe in
Prague and many others of Eastern Europe. I did not go there
because the Eurail is not accepted there. So someday in the
future I will have to make a tour there for science.
Looking in my world atlas I am caught with fascination over
exact geographical sites of science. Not the city locations
but the exact location in terms of longitude and latitude.
The history of science should start to list these exact
locations due to the patterning of history.
Leiden 52 9 N 4 30 E
New Hampshire 43 N 71 W
Rome 41 54N 12 29E Lucretius
Syracuse 37 4N 15 17E
Athens 37 58N 23 46 E
David Lloyd-Jones
"Archimedes Plutonium" <plut...@willinet.net> wrote in message
news:391F9993...@willinet.net...
>
> These are my last 3 days of my tour. And the last of my
> Eurail train log-in entries. I am glad I kept a log-in diary of
> my Eurail itinerary because in the future when my memory
> gets fading I can always look up the details. And I am sure
> that in the future, others will do a AP Sci Odyssey tour
> of Europe and will try to follow the exact route that I
> followed.
HGPT,DHOTF,LAL!!
(Uh, that would be "Hoot, giggle, plotz, thrash, drum heels on the floor,
larf a lot.")
Don't worry, Archie: we all luv ya!
-dlj.
David Lloyd-Jones
"Archimedes Plutonium" <plut...@willinet.net> wrote
> Archimedes distinguished 5 "simple machines" which occur in
> many combinations in mechanics. These are: lever, inclined
> plane, wedge, screw and wheel.
Archie,
This is weirder than belladonna and mace: the wedge and the inclined plane
are obviously the same thing. *Four* simple machines, sez
-dlj.
Hell, even that is cutting the screw some slack. Call it three and a half.
-d.