Galileo Museum

When we think about the Renaissance we usually think about art, maybe about the printing press. We usually don't think about the science. That's mostly because the science that was worked out in the Renaissance is stuff like the earth goes around the sun, if you drop them things will fall, how to keep buildings from falling over (clearly the Pisa people missed that one), and algebra. Really it's all stuff that we pretty well take for granted but it turns out it was all stuff that needed to be worked out. When you are starting from the assumption that the earth is flat and all illnesses can be cured by bloodletting, it takes some pretty creative thinking to get to even basic sciencey thoughts. I went to the Galileo museum to learn all about the science that grew out of the Renaissance. The museum started with the Renaissance and went all the way up through the end of the 1700s so we had plenty of time to get to more impressive stuff. 

These are all portable sundials. I always thought that that was a joke but apparently it was a real thing. My favorite is the cylindrical one. I'm not really sure how it is supposed to work, it looks the least like a sundial of all the things in there. 

I don't know what this giant orb is. I think it is supposed to show the orbits of different stars or planets. I think it looks like a big ball of yarn. 
 These are all different kinds of compasses. Looking at them I don't really think I could get a good looking circle out of any of them but who knows. Maybe I just never got to advanced circle drawing in my drafting class.





This is a surveying level that was so complicated to  use that it came with its own instruction book. They really didn't want you to lose the directions so they mounted the level on the book. I guess the only problem would be if you had to look something up while you were using the level.












Next we got into all of the cool demonstration equipment. The three you see here all demonstrate acceleration of rolling balls. The ramp shows that if you roll a ball down the ramp it goes faster and faster so will ring bells that are increasingly farther apart at the same time intervals all the way down. The halfpike shows that the ball rolled down the curve goes faster than the one rolled down the cord even though the distance is longer.
This one shows that things you throw off a cliff fall in a parabola. And the Christmas tree one shows that the ball accelerates, like the ramp above but in Christmas tree shape.


I'm pretty sure we still use this exact same model to show how muscles work.








And still use this one in physics lab for the experiments on coefficient of friction and center of gravity.











There were tons of different microscopes there. It was fun so see how they improved over about 150 years.

  

There were many of the same contraptions we use to demonstrate electricity. Just bigger and fancier so they could demonstrate for the kings and queens.

This is modular wiring for demonstrating electricity

A GIANT Newton's cradle. We weren't allowed to touch it.

This is Galileo's mummified finger and thumb

The same ticket got us into the natural history museum at the local university, so of course I bopped on over to see that too. I liked that there was a fancy display with murals and mosaics showing how fancy scientists are.       

That they also had a dried alligator hanging from the ceiling both ruined the effect and was super awesome.  





Since you saw the development of microscopes through time you will be glad to know they had a 1970s Electron microscope prominently displayed. It looks much less portable than the early versions.  
Like any natural history museum, this one was full of preserved creatures. Unlike any other natural history museum I have been to the people who preserved these creatures were terrible at taxidermy. I have a new theory that the reason all of the animals in Renaissance and early colonial times books look so weird is they had really terribly preserved models for the artists to work from. 





There was a pretty cool display on insect camouflage. If you look closely most of those plants are actually cleverly disguised bugs. Be afraid. Be very afraid.






There was an art installation of block prints of animals' noses that I though Laura would like.

I found some odd animals. Like all of these members of the llama family, some lesser known great apes, and a pangolin. 

The last portion of the museum was full of wax anatomical models. These were all made in the 1600s. I was very impressed with how accurate they are. I was also moderately disturbed that our knowledge of anatomy has stayed relatively constant since 1600. At least we have made progress in physiology. 

Oh yeah. Like any natural history museum they walk you out through a large display of rocks. You experience a few things as you walk through 1) rocks are super boring and you are glad you aren't a geologist. 2) oooo, that one is sparkly. 3) nope. rocks are still really boring.