An after-hours tour of the Boston Museum of Science

A couple of years ago, I helped the Boston Museum of Science with a nowcasting exhibit they were putting together. They used our system of algorithms to process radar data, and to page tour leaders when there was significant weather in the Boston area.

When I realized that I was going to be in Boston this week, I sent my contact at the museum an email asking if we could meet some evening. "The museum closes at 5pm on weekdays, but we can give you an after-hours tour," he emailed back, "You could play with our van de Graaf generator and then we'll show you around the WeatherWise exhibit."

That is how I ended up getting a very personal tour of a darkened museum. What I didn't realize was that the Boston museum didn't have a van de Graaf generator -- they had the van de Graaf generator, as in the same machine that Robert van de Graaf built to be a particle accelerator! I got to get into a cage being struck by "lightning" and see a show consisting of corona and a simulation of Franklin's key-and-kite experiment.

And of course, it was quite cool and gratifying to see my work (my work!) featured in a museum exhibit.

We took a bunch of pictures. I'll post them later.

2 comments:

  1. looking forward to the pics..

    :)

    idhe algorithm vechchu gas price predict pannu da!

    if you can tell me when and where to get the cheapest gas in the next 8 hours within a 5 mile radius..

    kushboo stylela unakku oru kutti kovile kattaren! We pay almost 3.5$ a gallon for 87 unleaded here now!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sundar,

    You can find the cheapest gas price here.

    http://www.sanjosegasprices.com/Cupertino/index.aspx?

    or by going to www.GasBuddy.com for different location and state.

    ReplyDelete