Tuesday, January 26th

After classes today, Allyson and I went to the Science Museum. We exited the tube at South Kensington, and are excited to return. South Kensington is the stop with three big museums: Science Museum, Natural History Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The Science Museum was a lot of fun! My dad would have really liked it. There are a lot of old cars, planes, engines, etc. There was also a room on the practice of medicine through the ages. I was most impressed by the aviation room, because there was a 3 foot wide slice of a Boeing 747 airplane. It was really cool to stand in front of it and see how a plane is sectioned. I was surprised how little is in between the passengers and the outside – not much insulation or padding separating the two. My favorite section by far was the interactive sections. We got to play with a lot of cool things! There was an infrared camera that you could stand in front of and then see your body heat on a screen in front of you. Allyson and I stood in front and conducted our own experiment! The first time we stood in front, the hottest parts of our body were white, then yellow, then orange, and finally the cooler parts of our skin were red. The coolest items (like our clothes and purses) were blue. My hands glowed white, while Allyson’s glowed red (aka freezing!). We thought this was hilarious, so we walked around the interactive section for another 20 minutes while I held one of her hands and warmed it up. After deeming it satisfactorily warmer (yet still quite chilly), we stood in front of the camera again and compared our hands. My hands were still white hot. Allyson’s unwarmed hand was still red, but the one I had warmed up was between yellow and orange! As we stood in front of the camera a while longer, we watched as her hand slowly changed back to red! It was crazy. What was even funnier was when she grabbed my neck with her hand, removed her hand, and then we could see the outline of her hand on my neck (orange on white)! We got a good laugh out of that. So we have scientifically proven that Allyson has ridiculously, abnormally cold hands!