FSEM 131 Takes on Philly

The collection at the Franklin Institute was, to say the least, impressive. A lot of different people other than Galileo helped to shape Galileo's findings and therefore the Galileo exhibit and it sort of helped me to find my bearings on the whole subject. Specifically, the name Medicea or Medici had been floating around class for awhile without me having any sort of clue as to what was going on and the exhibit really helped me identify the major players of astronomy back in the 1600's. Other names like Cosimo I and Archimendes not so prominent in class as well helped to point me in the right direction to discovering the setting that was Galileo's time. I haven't yet properly researched the names, but the museum display at least identified them.

The first thing I noticed was the hundreds (hundreds?) of different artifacts I guess I could say that were used to help navigate the seas (the discrepancy in country sized between the various maps were super cool). As Prof. Bary himself said, "I don't even know how to use half of these things." Imagine how I felt, haha.

The most striking to me however was, obviously, Galileo's telescope, the reason we traveled 10 hours (I say that very lovingly as that was some mad FSEM bonding). It just struck me as ingenious (again, thank you Captain Obvious) that Galileo could take a lead pipe with two plates of glass and completely verify the rewriting of the universe. It looked so simple, almost impossibly so and Galileo managed to observe the most fantastic of things.

What really struck me was that, however simple and ingenious the design, Galileo managed to perfect it in many a shorter time than anybody else possibly could (if I read right, right?). I don't really know where I was going with that other than that I thought it was interesting.

I love museums!