San Jose Tech Museum

Sat 8/18

Spent the day at the Tech Museum--wow what a place. With all the computer companies in this area, it focused on computer stuff. Lot of displays and history of the circuit card, complete with viewing them under microscopes. Lots of hands on displays.

Probably the most fascinating to me was the mini-theater where they had a white sphere about six feet in diameter suspended by thin wires. Four computers linked by a server to coordinate them, drove four projectors showing images on the sphere. The pictures were mostly of satellite photos of earth, taken over a four month time and stitched together for presentation. Shown on the sphere was a rotating display of earth, so it looked like a huge globe, complete with clouds!

Some of the photos were taken during the time of Hurricane Katrina, so you could see as it moved up the Gulf toward New Orleans.

They had a lot of NASA and space information. One ride was like an astronaut's jet pack. You sat in the chair, which rode on opposing magnets, so it "floated" just off the floor. Two controllers propelled the chair using bursts of compressed air. Just behind your head, a red light projected upward; your "mission" was to center the red light on a flashing green target above you, like you were making connections with parts of the space station. Chari did pretty well at it.

They also had a demo vehicle of an electric pickup. It was smaller than the old VW beetle, and a lot more spartan. And I thought Chari's Sebring rode rough--this would NOT be fun on a road trip--although we have seen several sign advising of electric vehical fueling stations.....

We ate a late lunch at the famous Peggy Sue's (50's diner). Good burgers and malts! Interesting to us that parking for the day was more than admission to the museum.

The museum also has an IMAX theater (like a 3d movie). We saw The Human Body, which was a great show! I could have done without the microscopic views of your stomach in action........There's an IMAX near our hometown, but this theater, while probably the same size dome, seated at 3-4 times as many people! Ours has a gentle slope to climb to higher rows of seats; this one is STEEP. The top rows were probably 50 ft above the first rows, so at the top, you sit closer to the screen.

Struggled to find our motel for the night, even though we'd stayed here before (1998?), and we drove by it once a few days ago. High on the list to purchase soon is a newer GPS. Ours is the old kind, without all the street features.

Ron