England-2011-greenwich

Greenwich Excursion, Saturday 29 January 2011

Travel

Outbound:

• We all need to be at the Westminster Pier, just across from the Westminster Underground station, by 10:00 Saturday morning. I'll have the ferry tickets with me.
• The ferry will leave Westminster Pier at 10:20 for Greenwich.
• The trip takes about an hour, the view is much nicer from the (exposed to the elements) upper-deck of the boat, consider dressing appropriately for that environment.

Return:

• We all need to be at the Greenwich Pier by 15:40 Saturday afternoon.
• The ferry will leave Greenwich Pier at 16:00 for Westminster.

Thames River Services, http://thamesriverservices.co.uk/

Preparation

Read about the three principle science pieces we'll work on in Greenwich, these are listed under Greenwich on the Supplemental Material page.

Read about the town of Greenwich and the things we'll see there:

• About Greenwich (Wikipedia)
• Royal Observatory (Wikipedia)
• National Maritime Museum
• Greenwich Market - this is a very old market, chartered in 1700
• Old Royal Naval College
• Greenwich Park

Other sites in and around Greenwich:

• Cutty Sark - an old famous boat
• Gipsy Moth IV - a relatively new famous boat, piloted on an around the world journey
• Greenwich foot tunnel - an old bit of solid engineering that takes you under the Thames

Plan

• I'll distribute printouts of the lab after we board the ferry for the trip to Greenwich so we can review those on the way.
• After arriving at the pier in Greenwich we'll walk up to the Royal Observatory and tour the grounds and museum together. There are a number of things to observe and discuss as a group there.
• When we are done at the Royal Observatory you folks will start working on the lab in groups. I expect that it will take you an hour or two to do the data collection component, which is the only part that needs to be done while we're in Greenwich. I'll be available to answer questions, etc. during this time.
• Once you are done with the lab work you are free to explore any of the other sites in Greenwich (see above).
• We'll meet back at the Greenwich Pier by 15:40 for the ferry back to Westminster Pier and ultimately to the flat for chili, etc.

Bloggers

We will need two volunteers from the studio audience to take pictures and write-up/post a blog entry about this excursion. Get in touch if you are interested.

Science, Technology and Society

There are many connections to the course in Greenwich, among the principle ones:

• Royal Observatory (Wikipedia)
  • John Harrison's marine chronometers
  • Longitude 0, aka the Prime Meridian
• Many of the exhibits in the National Maritime Museum

Your principle course related tasks while we're in Greenwich will be at the Royal Observatory and working on data collection for the lab.

First Lab

• Details forthcoming.