What do these three very different things have in common? The answer: they all fit into my day today! This is going to be a shorter entry than usual, as I need to do some laundry, dishes and general housekeeping tasks in the morning-a time I normally reserve for blogging.
My day began with blogging, and then continued with my Isaac Newton class, in which we built our own spectrometers. For those of you who (like me) had never heard of these before, spectrometers are instruments used to observe, measure and/or record spectra like light. It sounds high-tech, but our professor showed us how to make one using our phone cameras, black paper, duct tape and a linear diffraction grating (a special transparent sheet similar to a prism).
In the afternoon, we took the tube to King’s Cross station-I suspect Harry
Potter fans are now on high alert-and walked from there to the British Library, one of the most extensive on Earth. You can’t check out books unless you are a registered member of the library, so we headed straight to ‘Treasures of the British Library’, an admission and camera-free exhibit available year-round. Some of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notes, the
Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, original Beatles lyrics handwritten by various members and the only existing manuscript of Beowulf. They also had an exhibit about the rise of punk rock, with particular emphasis on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, which I loved!
After spending several hours in the library, we returned to King’s Cross and then took the tube back to Scape… Just kidding! We couldn’t pass up
the opportunity to visit Platform 9 3/4! Unfortunately, we arrived during rush hour and there were dozens of people in line to take pictures underneath the sign, so we opted to wait and come back another day/time when there are fewer people.
