Tea Party at the Museum

Finally, after being inactive for a while, we went over to the city and picked up some blogging material in the form of the Hong Kong Science museum. We bought a year-long pass for the whole family for 25 U.S. dollars. I don't usually type smiley faces on my blog, but this post is unusually smiley, so I feel that this is appropriate: :)

This picture is from the subway station that we took to the museum.

Through the astonishing process of evolution, vending machines have adapted to the rainy conditions of Hong Kong. Yes, those cylinders are umbrellas.

The first station in the museum that we went to was themed around electricity. Unfortunately, we let Dad near it.

This museum is known for being very hands-on. At every station, you could test out what the signs were telling you, instead of simply taking their word.

At this station, there was a hand crank and four lights (three of them working). We could use the crank to power the lights, and observe how the resistance gradually increased as more lights were hooked up.

This picture is from the less interesting safety section, where the theme was safe practices in construction sites. Here I am explaining to Dad why it would be a bad idea to attempt to operate the crane. Dad here is playing an virtual mini game- he has a screen in front of him- that challenges you to operate a crane with about five different levers while obeying the hand signals of a virtual signaler. It was mind-blowingly complex, but luckily, we managed to extinguish Dad's head before anything else got burned.

The next station was the world of mirrors. The mirrors could reflect interesting things back at you. Here I am, for instance, having a nice tea party with me, me, myself, me, and me.

Welcome to the cloning laboratory. Here is (are?) our most successful experiment, poking their heads out of their tubes.

Those weren't all the tricks the mirrors had up their sleeves. Some of their best gimmicks are below:

-A mirror that reflected everyone besides the viewer normally, but made the viewer's torso and head disappear, along with any limbs too close to them.

-A mirror that reflected a shortened image, making anyone who was reflected seem stubby. As an added bonus, if one were to extend their arm, it would appear to grow longer and thinner, as if stretching.

-A maze that used mirrors to make itself look more complex than it actually was (one mirror was all it took to turn two branching paths into four).

-A mirror that reflected only half of one's body, but also displayed a mirrored image of the half right next to the original projection. In this way, it created the illusion that there was a full body reflected in the mirror. This allowed for a visitor to lift up the leg that was being reflected and thus make the mirrored image lift up both legs, and presto! A floating reflection.

I will try to include more pictures after the next time we visit, both of the mirrors and of some interesting pictures that the museum had on display- they were like optical illusions. They played with your eyes. For now, goodbye and thank you for reading.

Bonus!

This is our apartment building. Notice the gaping hole- there is actually an interesting explanation behind it. According to a guide book, the apartment was intentionally built this way so that the dragon who lives in the mountains behind the building can have easy passage through and be able to drink from the bay. It seems that it has been an unnecessary effort so far. Maybe our water tastes too much like sweat, and the dragon prefers water from a less humid place.