My favorite activity of the first three days was the Museum
in Leiden. Even though we did not get to see the exhibits as they are
displayed, it was still cool to see so many historical scientific instruments
and learning the stories that went with each of them. It was interesting to
actually see Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes after reading about them in our book. They
were much smaller then I thought and I can’t imagine using them for actual
scientific research. Being able to see all of the other microscopes throughout
the ages lined up on the shelves was also really neat. I liked being able to
see the different improvements, design changes and ascetic flourishes of each
device. The museum was especially cool because we were led by Tiemen and
his coworker who were able to give us the exclusive and behind the scenes tour.
Hey Luke, it was really cool to see Leeuwenhoek's microscope, especially since we're reading a book all about it. It was a totally different experience seeing all the museum artifacts in the storage building, we were able to also see some of the items that they don't normally put on display. My favorite part though was going into the workshop to see how they restored their different items.
ReplyDeleteLuke-- I agree that it was very interesting to finally see a Leewenhoek microscope after so much talk about it in our book. It really puts into perspective how remarkable his discoveries we're and how difficult it must have been to come to such conclusions with such a seemingly simple, but not user friendly microscope. Even though our tour wasn't traditional, I think it was nice to have a backstage museum tour, rather than waking through a traditional set up.
ReplyDeleteLuke, I also enjoyed the Leiden Museum. I really liked how we got a behind the scenes look into what makes a museum function. It was fascinating to me how much actual history was locked up in storage. I figured most museums displayed most of their collections or at lease kept it at around 50/50 displayed to what's in storage. My favorite piece at the museum was the therapeutic machines like the really old stair master and the saddle machine.
ReplyDeleteLuke,the microscopes were also one of my favourite things about our first days in Amstredam. I, being a biologist in training, was awed by the evolution of the microscopes. However, it did not compare to seeing a rare Leeuwenhoek microscope!
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the Boerhaave collection also. What was really fascinating was the workshop. Tieman's co-worker is a really talented guy. I don't know if you guys noticed, but besides the two before and after pictures of the pump thing there were two before and after pictures of a sword. It looked like it was made yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI also realy liked this museum. Of course I thought that the microscopes were amazing. Even though they were described in the book, I did not quite understand exactly what they looked liked. It was amazing to see them in person. Outside of seeing all of the artifacts I thought that it was really interesting how they repair and restore the artifacts. I was also amazed at how well Tieman's co-worker could reproduce working copies of the items. That must take an incredible amount of skill.
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