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.
• 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

• TBD.

Plan

• TBD.

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:

• Royal Observatory
• John Harrison's marine chronometers
• Longitude 0, aka Greenwich Meridian

First Lab

• TBD.

Background Material

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich

Local Attractions

• Market (chartered in 1700) - this is a great market and I encourage you to walk through it at some point during the day.
• Cutty Sark - an old famous boat.
• Palace of Placentia/Royal Naval College - beautiful architecture, historical significance
• National Maritime Museum -
• Gipsy Moth IV - a relatively new famous boat, piloted around the world.
• Greenwich foot tunnel - an old bit of solid engineering that takes you under the Thames.