A Harp With No Strings

October 14, 2012

Harp not on that string, madam, that is past. —William Shakespeare, Richard III

You can harp not on that string at the Glasgow Science Centre, because the harp on display has no strings. It replaces them with thin beams of infrared light. Break a beam and a note plays. It's a bit like the sophisticated alarm systems you see in jewel-heist movies—you know, the ones in which the star has to wriggle and contort his way through a cross-hatch of infrared rays to reach the diamonds. Playing the infrared harp is considerably easier, though it's an odd experience to create music by plucking thin air.

Infrared radiation also can create funky photos. This is a shot of my parents taken at the Glasgow Science Centre with a camera that—like night-vision goggles—can detect infrared waves given off by our bodies. Certain snakes can sense the infrared r… — Infrared radiation also can create funky photos. This is a shot of my parents taken at the Glasgow Science Centre with a camera that—like night-vision goggles—can detect infrared waves given off by our bodies. Certain snakes can sense the infrared radiation given off by warm-blooded prey, and use that when hunting. The snakes detect the radiation through holes in their faces called pit organs.

That's my mom, who studied piano at Juilliard, skillfully playing the stringless harp in Glasgow in the video (top). This was the second harp-related moment of our British Isles trip. The first came in London, when we visited the former home of George Frideric Handel, the German-born Baroque composer. (Jimi Hendrix later lived in the adjacent flat.) Handel had a beautiful harpsichord, an instrument that got its name from the way it creates sound: Its strings are plucked, like those of a harp, rather than hammered, like those of a piano. Which raises the question: Shouldn't a piano be called a hammerchord?

An interactive element of the Handel House museum is its wardrobe. My dad and I tested out replicas of the composer’s wig—reminded me of the mad-scientist wigs we have at the Notebook. Pamelia looked quite dashing in Handel’s blue jacket.

But returning home is always enjoyable too. This was the first Maine sunrise we saw, while driving north from Boston.

Back in Maine: A young cormorant at dusk on Saturday on Jordan Pond.

The Notebook hosted a fun birthday party yesterday for 7-year-old Max and 14 of his friends. The dinosaur cake was an especially big hit.

Here’s a peek inside a brown paper bag full of the dinosaurs and dino bones (carefully planted in advance) that young partygoers dug up on the Seal Harbor beach. Is that a cool party activity, or what?

The Mount Desert Island Marathon made its way through Seal Harbor this morning in the cold rain. The runners very much appreciated our yells of encouragement.

One more illusion, from the Glasgow Science Centre:

No, I am not actually standing on the chair. See next photo…

A camera shoots the image from a spot outside the left edge of this picture, with the legs and the chairback lined up to create the illusion. In our photo, Pamelia stood closer to the camera, by the two chair legs, while I stood on the seat in back,… — A camera shoots the image from a spot outside the left edge of this picture, with the legs and the chairback lined up to create the illusion. In our photo, Pamelia stood closer to the camera, by the two chair legs, while I stood on the seat in back, making her appear larger.

O.K., one FINAL last illusion, again from the Glasgow Science Centre. As you might have guessed, I was lying on the floor when this photo was taken.

Music, Moscow and the Mailbag

February 15, 2011

Need a quick infusion of joy? Click on the video and watch the creative genes at work in this young conductor, courtesy of Notebook contributors Andy and Adele from North Carolina.

The Naturalist's Notebook (e-)mailbag has had some other interesting comments and contributions lately, from places as far away as Japan. Let's take a look at a few:

Watt You Might Have Missed:

After we noted Thomas Edison's birthday a few days ago, Pamelia's brother, Scott, who works in energy conservation for a utility company, sent in this comment with more about the Wizard of Menlo Park: "Thomas Edision was indeed founder of the first electric utility, Pearl Street Station, in NYC. So, quite an accomplishment, more so because people did not have any immediate need to purchase electricity?! After all, there were no electric appliances around most homes. So he sold light bulbs, not electricity. Yes, back then, the electricity was free! Imagine the convenience of turning a switch when you came home instead of lighting an oil lamp or candle. Those of you who do the house work, will cringe to learn, the second big (and I mean “big”) electric appliance was the vacuum cleaner! The first ones had to be pulled around on horse drawn carts! The third, another one we all love, the electric iron!"

Here is one of those horse-drawn vacuum cleaners, on exhibit at Don Aslett's Cleaning Museum in Pocatello, Idaho. The vacuum was parked on he street; it cleaned buildings with vacuum hoses.

Speaking of Horses...

In an e-mail to a Notebook correspondent, I mentioned that I was curious how roads were cleared of snow in the days before the invention of the truck and the snowplow. He dug into his deep well of expertise and provided this explanation: "As I 'recall,' many of the roads, at least in the 1800s, were rolled. The wooden roller was pulled by a horse (of course, of course) or probably a team of them, and the only shoveling of snow, except around a horse and barn, was onto the road where it passed through a covered bridge. Pulling a sleigh over a dry, wooden surface would have been tough sledding, so to speak."

Why a Tomato Is a Fruit

I jokingly told a botanist friend that, to clear up my confusion over the differences between fruits, seeds and nuts, I would love to take a Fruits and Seeds 101 course he might teach. I told him I would be the one arriving at class dressed as a either a fruit or a nut. His reply: "Sorry, a nut is a type of fruit. With the notable exception of strawberries—where did I read about that?—the seeds of flowering plants are enclosed in fruits. That’s why a tomato is a fruit, but so are walnuts and acorns. We have this image that a fruit is soft, brightly colored, and more or less juicy, and seeds are hard, and drab, and dry. The latter is generally true, but the fruits of many plants (e.g., grasses) are not particularly appealing to the palate until they have been processed in some way. This fall I took an acorn class from [a botanist friend], and last week I had acorn-flour-based pancakes at his house."

It's a fruit if it contains seeds. That means that not just tomatoes, but also cucumbers, squash and green beans are, in scientific terms, fruit. Unless there's a Legume Corollary I don't know about that applies to the beans. My botanist friend will advise.

Dogs of Moscow

Russian rush hour: One of the Moscow canines riding the tube between the suburbs and the city center.

Our correspondent in Russia sent along a story about how dogs in that country's capital have learned to ride the subway from the suburbs into the center of the city, where the food scraps and mooching are better. Researchers are studying this behavior, which seems to have started after the Soviet Union collapsed. Not sure how the dogs raise the nearly $1-a-ride fare.

The Olympics, a Year Later

A sports colleague sent me a link to a story about the status of the environmentally-designed Vancouver Olympic Village, which I toured a few days before the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics while covering the Games for Sports Illustrated. As some of you have may already read (I linked the story on Facebook), only a small fraction of the apartments that housed athletes and coaches during the Games have been sold as part of a condo conversion. The recession and a wariness about the village's gritty, industrial neighborhood are largely to blame. Apparently in environmentally progressive real estate—as in other forms of real estate, and baseball pitching—the old dictum still applies: location, location, location. (For a look back at my tour of the Vancouver Olympic village, click on: http://naturalistsnote.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/olympics-green-legacy/. For the happy news about SI's Olympic preview issue winning a magazine award last week, check out: http://www.foliomag.com/2011/sports-illustrated.)

The athletes' village (with eco-designed green roof) is now an under-occupied condo complex.

Wishful Thinking Dept.
When Pamelia and I were in frigid Seal Harbor a few days ago doing some work at The Naturalist's Notebook, we couldn't help smiling at the fun-and-sun spirit implicit below:

SI's swimsuit issue may be out, but not even polar-bear club members were using Seal Harbor's snowed-in beach facilities.

Last Puzzler Answer
What natural North American landmark is always moving backwards? Niagara Falls, whose rim wears down by two-and-a-half feet each year because of water erosion.

Today's Puzzler Here's a real challenging one: What has two big legs and three small legs and can only be seen at night?

Birthdays

Galileo Galilei, the world-changing Italian astronomer, physicist and mathematician, would have been 447 years old today. He has been called the father of modern science, the father of astronomy and the father of modern physics (and he was in fact the father of three children), but some of his ideas weren't welcome during his lifetime. His strong support for Copernicus's theory that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the solar system—a theory condemned by the Catholic Church as "false and contrary to Scripture"—led to his arrest and conviction as part of the Inquisition. He died under house arrest, still deemed a heretic, but has since been honored with everything from stamps to coins to street names to a prominent mention in Queen's song Bohemian Rhapsody.

Margaret Knight, the York, Maine-born inventor who's known as both the female Thomas Edison and the Queen of Paper Bags, would have been 173 years old yesterday. In 1871 she patented a revolutionary machine that folded and glued paper into the flat-bottomed bags (paper, not plastic) that are still used today in grocery and department stores. (That feat earned her a place in the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wisc.) Even as a child she was inventing and building items, such as sleds and kites for her brothers. Her more than two dozen patents included the window frame and sash and a machine for cutting shoe soles.

Fritz Zwicky, the Swiss astronomer from Caltech who in 1935 (with a colleague) coined the term supernova, would have been 113 yesterday. Supernovae are exploding stars that generate phenomenal heat and light and create, in their interstellar blast furnace, many of the elements from which the universe is composed.

If we're highlighting the three-year-old conductor above, we might as well mention that Henry E. Steinway, the German-born founder of the world's most famous piano-making company, would have been 214 years old today. My favorite Steinway story involves my mother's father, Oscar Laitinen, who died shortly before I was born. As a young man he saved up all his money and—even though he was a starving artist who didn't even know how to play the piano—bought a Steinway baby grand. He fit it into his small apartment and learned to play it. So did my mother, Jean Neff, who wasn't half bad. She went on to study piano at Juilliard.

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