Author: kayrpea61

Rüdesheim – Mechanical Music & Coffee

After a morning visit to Mainz, the cruise ship is underway again, its progress assisted by the rapidly flowing Rhine. It is not long before we arrive at our next port of call.

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We have been promised a train by our Tour Director, and sure enough, the Winzerexpress is chartered to take us, from the dock, on an orientation tour of the town.

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The Winzerexpress delivered us to the door of Siegfried’s Mechanical Musical Instrument Museum.

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We were introduced to the experience by a costumed hostess, and led through the exhibits by a well informed guide. What fun! What an experience! From the simple music box to the full orchestra. From early wax recordng, to clockwork, to wind and strings. Some were really quite loud!

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We could not help but notice the aged but interesting decorative ceilings in the building.

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After this amazing musical experience, there was time for a quick look along the shopping street, but we didn’t want to get wet! There was strong evidence of being prepared for the tourist trade, especially in the Christmas shop.

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However, we were filled with anticipation about our Rüdesheim Coffee experience.  Served in special cups, they start with local Asbach brandy, add sugar, flame the brandy, then add coffee, top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Think beer hall on a smaller scale, the venue was well and truly geared to the tour groups, with an effective production line.

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The wording on the drinking vessel is “Rüdesheim am Rhein, anno 1860, die Vatenstadt von Asbach” translated “Rüdesheim on Rhine, since 1860, the native town of Asbach”

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We also needed a translation of this plaque on the wall – “Interesting facts about the wine they find in our house”. That was all the prompting we needed – we purchased a bottle of the excellent local Riesling for consumption at a later date.

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……… and the last word, the verdict about the Rüdesheim Coffee …….. three out of four of us thought it was well worth €7.50 and ordered another.       Cheers!

Autumn Colour

Sydney does not have the dramatic changes of season that can be experienced in some other parts of Australia or other countries. This is easy to understand when we consider that the midday temperature in Sydney on the winter solstice is often comparable to the midday temperature on the same June day in parts of England.

It should be noted, in passing, that the vast majority of Australian natives are evergreen. The Australian ‘bush’ remains green all year, while the imported species turn various shades of yellow to red and shed their leaves.

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A Nyssa Sylvatica colours up against a backdrop of a Sydney Red Gum (Angophora species)

In the past week, we have had a succession of typical autumn days – maximum temperature in the mid twenties Celsius, with overnight minimum around 10 Celsius.  The clear blue skies add to the enjoyment of this season, even if the the bowls don’t always go where they should.

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While enjoying such gorgeous weather, as well as watching some trees change colour, we celebrate the colours of Sydney autumn with many flowers as well. There is an abundance of blooms on our Sasanqua Camellias, which began flowering in early March, and are still going strong.

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The Gordonias (sometimes knows as Fried Egg Plants) are also covered with flowers and surrounding themselves with a carpet of spent blooms. On past experience, this will continue for the next month or so.20130425_Autumn_006

Some roses are in their third or fourth flush for the season. This one is called Seduction.

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On a recent garden visit, we saw some delightful, and different, Salvias.

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The air is heavy with the ‘vanilla custard’ fragrance of this Heliotrope, called “Cherry Pie”.20130428_Autumn_009

Not to be outdone, a Banksia stands to attention, representing Australian natives.

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A Lifetime of technical Evolution: Part 3 – The Laser

It would have been 1964 (in third year Physics at Sydney University) that we first learnt about the MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). Coincidentally, 1964 saw the Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov (who described the theory at the Lebedev Institute in 1952) and Charles H Townes (whose group built the first ammonia maser at Columbia University in 1953), “for their research in the field of stimulated emission”.

An optical version of the maser was first proposed in 1957, and originally called an “optical maser”. In the same year, 1957, Gordon Gould (working at Columbia University under Townes)  is credited with coining the name “LASER”, the acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Gould built his first laser in 1958, but was tardy in filing for patents, as a result of which his application was refused and the invention exploited by others. It took twenty years before the patent war was won, and Gould was finally granted patents in 1977.

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The physics of the laser.  Source: V1adis1av (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

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Helium-Neon laser demonstration at the Kastler-Brossel Laboratory at Paris VI: Pierre et Marie Curie. The glowing ray in the middle is a discharge tube (akin to that of a neon light), it is not the laser beam. The laser beam crosses the air and marks a red point on the screen to the right.  Source: David Monniaux via Wikimedia Commons

So, in this lifetime, lasers have been proposed in theory, conceived, built and developed to the myriad of applications they now serve (for an impressive, if not exhaustive list, click here). From medicine to mining, industry to entertainment, military to domestic, lasers are part of our life today.  Lasers are used to perform delicate eye surgery, to guide missiles, to cut and weld components, to read barcodes. In the home or office, lasers are used to point at a presentation slide, in the desktop printer, and to read data on CDs and DVDs. Lasers can be seen illuminating the Sydney Opera House ‘sails’ or Stone Mountain, Georgia, in a ‘laser light show’.

In fact, lasers have proliferated in ways almost unimaginable less sixty years ago.

Let us not forget the maser. Although perhaps overshadowed by its ‘offspring’, the maser is employed in astrophysics and communications. Perhaps the most important application is the use of the hydrogen maser as an atomic frequency standard and with other atomic clocks, provides the International Time standard.