Week 3, part one

Yet another view of the Capitol

This week's "field trip" for us British interns of the Navy museum was the United States Botanic Garden on Capitol Hill.

It was like Kew gardens, but in Washington D.C. So basically, Kew gardens, with a view of the Capitol Building in the background, and no temperature or humidity difference between the green houses and the outside. In fact, I’m pretty sure we discovered that some of the greenhouses were actually less sticky than walking around outside…

Botanical Gardens

Washington D.C: where greenhouses are less humid than your own office/ apartment.

Titan Arum, one of the largest flower species in the world, over 6 foot

This flower blooms very rarely, it even has a webcam on it constantly, to monitor its progress. Anyway, the day after we go to the gardens, it begins to blossom. Typical. Although, it is nicknamed the "corpse" plant, and it is supposed to smell "like roadkill on a hot day" so missing that may have been a blessing in disguise!

Tropical!

 

See, just like Kew Gardens/ a greenhouse, with the Capitol in the background

After the Botanic gardens we were going to go to get a tour around the Capitol, but they wanted to throw away my bag. More specifically, their security arrangements demanded that all food, drink, bug spray, sun tan lotion etc. be discarded, and as that was practically everything I had on me, I decided it wasn't worth it and went to the Air & Space museum instead.  

 

Planes!

The Air & Space museum is one of the biggest in the world. Walking past security, and into the museum itself, felt like walking into an airport terminal, a feeling magnified by the height of the ceiling and glass walls.

 

How hot air balloons should be...

 

Although the Air & Space museum is one of the most popular attractions under the Smithsonian banner, I have to admit that I'm not that mad on air and space travel. 4 well-spent hours later though, I have been somehwhat converted. Ok, so 1/2 an hour of the total time was spent going through security (a school of Chinese children arrived just prior to me...) but the rest of the time I was busy admiring aerial exhibits and poking bits of rock, supposedly from the moon (I mean, it could have been fake, and I wouldn't have be able to tell - who would?)

Most fascinating things learnt;

• The Aral sea is shrinking
• "Planet" comes from the Greek word "planetes", meaning "wanderer"
• Io (a moon of Jupiter's) is the only object in this solar system, other than Earth, that shows signs of current volcanic activity
• Telescopes are actually time machines, because we are seeing things that happened days/ months ago by the time light reaches us on Earth
• The "Big Bang" was an explosion OF the universe, as it expanded, not an explosion into some finite "space"
• If cars could drive straight up, vertically, "space" is only 1 hour away
• The distance, by car, between Washington D.C and New York City is how high above Earth the International Space Station is
• Barrage Balloons were hung over Buckingham palace during WW2 to prevent German bombers from getting too close

Seeing the drawings of the Wright brothers reminded me of the sketches from Da Vinci's notebook, which I studied last term. Perhaps the most arresting thing I saw was a display screen of the U.S air control, with the pathways of different flights, and their directions, appearing as coloured lines which zig-zag across the States. In the bottom left-hand corner was a timer, with the hour and date. The footage for 9/11, after about 10am, shows an ominously dark screen, as the lights representing flights, the colours and the lines, disappear one by one.