The last month has been a busy time for the museum. We had our first school visit in the new space, with a group of year 11/12 students from Roma. They seemed to know their stuff and enjoyed 'shaking hands with your real image' once they stopped being shy. The class of ARTT2115 (Art, Science and the New Technologies) came one afternoon to see some astronomical instruments. I bamboozled them with an explanation of how to cast a horoscope using an astrolabe and let them look through a replica of the telescope Galileo used to discover the moons of Jupiter. Using a Powerpoint presentation on the screen at the end of the room worked well. That was another first time.
Dr Gary Tuck and colleagues have the UQiLabs radioactivity experiment now running in the display case at the foyer end. Students can log in and run the experiment remotely from anywhere in the world, so every so often it wakes up and lights come on and displays flicker and it sends some data and goes back to sleep.
The biggest news is that, after months of preparation, all the items that would not fit in the new space were moved out to our storeroom at Long Pocket yesterday. That frees up the teaching space we had 'borrowed' so it can be used during the refurbishment of the rest of the ground floor of the building. Once again, Peter Hadgraft's assistance and encouragment were invaluable. Meanwhile, Joshua Melson has begun entering data into the website database, and I have organised the first part of the "100 Years of Physics at UQ" audio tour so I can show it off to guests at the UQ Celebration of Giving function next week.
It is pleasing to see quite a few casual visitors in the museum, and some of the people who come to check on the Pitch Drop look in too.
Norman
