We spent the last day of “half-term” doing very little. I spent the day catching up with work-related stuff, so David took the kids into town for lunch at a noodle place (he came home with a distended stomach and an exclamation about how satisfying it is to “tuck into” a big bowl of noodles!). We had grand plans for the afternoon, but I never managed to catch up on work, and the weather wasn’t cooperating—I thought “white cloud” was just a brand of toilet tissue before living in Scotland, but I now know that it’s an incredibly accurate term used to describe Scottish weather—so we just stayed in. The kids seemed relieved to have a chance to just hang out, and put in a few good hours of Playmobil together. At one point, I overheard John say to Emma, “I know this is changing the subject, but I really like how socks work. You just put them on when you have cold feet, and your feet just warm right up!”
The rain came on Saturday, and it looked as if it was going to last all day, so we packed up and headed to Dundee. Our first trip to the city, which is about twenty-five minutes north of us (just across the Firth of Tay) had been a bust, but this time we were armed with guidebooks and a GPS, so we went into it more confidently. We started at the Dundee science center, which is called Sensation and focuses on the five senses. The museum is fabulous (brilliant, as they would say here…) and though we intended to stay for only a few hours, we stayed through mid-afternoon as there was so much to do. There were many, many interactive displays, each more entertaining than the next. One area called “Mind Wars” had two people sit against each other to see who could relax the most, and create the least brain activity, and a small ball moved between them as their brain activity rose or fell. There was a planetarium inside, a game that tested reaction time, a whole section on robots, and a display on balance that all of us failed. See the video below for some of the things we did!
When planning the visit, I had neglected to realize that there are inherent risks associated with visiting a museum on the senses with a philosopher! David is the guy that, when asked if a tree makes a sound when it falls in an unpopulated forest, says that it all depends on one’s definition
of sound. A few minutes after our arrival, he ushers me over to a display on eyesight, which seems to imply that the way eyesight works is this: one eye sees one flat image, and the other eye sees a different flat image, and the brain combines them together to trick you into thinking you are seeing a three-dimensional world. “Well, it IS a three-dimensional world!” he says, shaking his head. During the planetarium show, I heard him chuckle as the narrator of the film confidently asserted that “as soon as life was possible on Earth, it began.” “It was always POSSIBLE,” he whispered. When the film began to discuss “other worlds besides Earth,” I felt another argument coming, so I just moved further away! I did feel as if I got my revenge a bit later when, in a display about viewing colors, we discovered that David is colorblind!
We had lunch in the museum then made the mistake of going back to the Overgate Shopping Center for a white tshirt for John’s school uniform. We squeezed through the parking garage again, and though we didn’t hit anything this time, were all on edge after just barely making it into a parking space that was mere millimeters larger than our car. That one was my fault, actually, after insisting that David was going to run into yet another concrete post in the middle of the garage, then convincing him to turn the wrong way, right into an oncoming car! It seemed that everyone else within an hour of Dundee had made the same decision to go to the mall as well, and after fighting the crowds for almost two hours, we were all incredibly grouchy and decided to leave, vowing NEVER to go back there again.
Next, we went to the Olympia Leisure Center, which is right on the river and beckons with several water slides that twist in and out of the building over the river. “Leisure Centers” are pretty common here, and most decent size town have one—they combine a fitness center with some combination of swimming pools that allow users to do laps and pools that can be used just for horsing around. The latter is usually “zero-depth” meaning you walk into it gradually, like walking into the ocean, but is of course much warmer. The one in Dundee is just a hair cooler than a hot tub, which does make me hope that it’s heated and not just warmed up from kid pee! This one also has a “lazy river” kind of pool, where a current takes you around the pool in a big circle. All four of us spent a good bit of time in this pool yesterday, and stayed in a line at the edge of the pool, where the current goes so fast that one feels like Apolo Ohno whipping around an oval speed-skating track. The pool also has four huge water slides, one of which is possibly the most terrifying water slide I have ever seen. It starts at the very top of the building (maybe five stories high?) then winds around outside the building, until it stops over a huge pool at the same height as a high dive. The slide ends, and the slider just free-falls the rest of the way into the pool. And in true Scottish fashion, they just let anybody use it anyway you want and there are no size restrictions on it or anything. So of course John and David did it, and I looked up in time to see John shoot out of the bottom of the thing like a bullet. They said it was great fun, but I did notice that neither of them chose to go on it a second time!
Okay...not to get to scientific with the philosopher, but you can indeed confirm that in a very simplistic way, the Museum's explanation of eyesight was accurate. From our experience with Lyra, who doesn't have binocular vision, she doesn't have depth perception like we do. Things that are multi-dimensional to us appear flatter to her. She also can't see "3-d" movies like we do because only one eye processes images at a time. Sounds like a great visit!
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