Wearing Technology

Picking up where we left off yesterday, here we have an MRI machine.

A camera was set up to allow the passerby to see a very different view of themselves- in this case, if you were flayed alive. Only without the horrendous level of pain of that actually happening.

Here we have a large space that was geared more towards younger kids.

Moving on, the theme became wearable technology. It included a display case with items from the Canadian Olympic wrestler Erica Wiebe, who won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics.

This shirt is a biometric shirt. It is designed to give athletes data they would get from a performance lab without the inconvenience of being hooked up to monitors.

The Newtsuit is a deep sea diving suit, a Canadian innovation.

Amauti is the term for an Inuit parka worn by women, with the oversized hood featuring a pouch for carrying babies in. This one blends traditional design with some contemporary materials. 

The traditional cowboy boot is side by side with this WWII era pilot boot liner, which was designed to plug into a plane's electrical system and keep the pilot's feet warm.

Here we have quite a mix of helmets.

And it's not just people who wear technology. These red tinted glasses prevent chickens from seeing blood on each other, reducing the chance of pecking in a flock. Looks stylish too.

Applied Science

Astronomy is another element explored here at the museum. Much of what we see in the night sky has name origins in Western or Arabic sources, but other peoples have looked up into the night skies and given their own names for constellations. Such has been the case with First Nations peoples in North America.

Mounted below is an astrograph, used for photography. A model of a Canadian radio telescope from the 1960s is below.

This is one of the unusual features inside the museum, and very popular with kids (I had to wait to get a shot without kids in it). The Crazy Kitchen may not quite look it, but this space has a twelve percent slope that you can feel walking through. The furnishings are fastened in place so they don't fall, causing an illusion of a flat surface. You have to brace yourself to cross this space, and the railing is there for a good reason.

I moved into an area concerned with the five senses, and noted this panel with a dog trained to detect the scents of illnesses.

Other panels, accompanied by the machines themselves, went into detail on devices we use for medical detection. They included the X-Ray machine.

And then there's the ultrasound.

For today I finish off with the Computed Tomography (CT) Scan. This is an older one, but the machine allows for many X-Ray images to be combined into a three dimensional volume.

Big And Small

A collection of steam engine locomotives are found here in the Science And Technology Museum, having pride of place in the collection. They are formidable to look at. 

Staircases have been installed to even allow the visitor into the cab and see the multitude of controls and switches.

Down below is a model of an ocean going ship, the Empress of Japan. The Canadian Pacific Railway established the seafaring side of its business with ocean liners such as this one, transporting immigrants to a new life in Canada starting in 1890.

From big machines to small things. I wandered over into an area that explored microscopes, their place in science, and the infinite variety of subjects that can only be seen through their assistance.

Transport

Fall is upon us, and so I decided to switch out my header yesterday for an autumn view taken last October at the Champlain Lookout over on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, in Gatineau Park. 

Continuing on with the museum visit, panels and displays examine steel, which has been with us for a very long time, and which today has many variants.

I then moved into an area concerning itself with transportation- of many kinds.

This is an amphicar, the only consumer type ever produced, dating from 1961. 

Overhead were bicycles.

This being Canada, of course there were snowmobiles, which have evolved over time in design specs to look like what we generally have today, at right.

Winter is a preoccupation in Canada, and this pillar puts things in perspective, showing the average snowfall in Canadian cities each year. St. John's tops the list. Ottawa gets a lot. Places in the Prairie heartland get less, but that's because they have a drier climate, and they get a similar brutal cold as we do. Toronto, of course, has television forecasters who panic at the first sign of a snowflake and predict the end of the world and say it's time to eat your dead. 

One way of getting out and about in winter is on snowshoes. These are contemporary ones.

These are more of the traditional type.

The Huron-Wendat Museum in Quebec City takes visitors on snowshoe hikes in the winter. This is one place I've never been to, though I have been in Quebec City.

Another kind of transport- ships of the ocean going variety. These models include a sailing ship, a freighter, a ferry, and a cruise ship.