Rei: "Today we are posting the photos of the Star Wars exhibit itself. From yesterday's set of photos you wouldn't even know I was with Asuka! She's such an attention hog..."
Asuka: "HEY!"
Rei: (really quietly) "You guys know it's true..."
Rei: "We entered the exhibit hall thru a door that had been set up to look like a building on Tatooine. Near the front of the exhibit hall, we came upon a landspeeder."
Next to the landspeeder (well, really more around the corner and behind a model of the canyon racer from the newer trilogy) there was an exhibit on magnetic levitation. This is the technology that seems closest to the technology that makes the landpeeder and the canyon racer run. It's also (I think!) the technology that Japan's bullet train uses. If you have ever played with magnets, you know that two magnets can either pull towards each other, or push away from each other. A vehicle using magnetic levitation uses the power of magnets pushing away from each other to float the vehicle a little ways off the ground from the track. That lets the vehicle move very quickly. The magnetic force is created by electricity (electricity can make things magnetic, as you should hopefully know). And... well, that's as much as I paid attention. There was so much to see! But you could make your own train and run it over some tracks to see how magnetic levitation worked. Here I am checking out that exhibit:
There was also a video of the people who worked on the special effects talking about the landspeeder and the canyon racer - I only listened to part of it, but the person was saying that they never fully decided how the landspeeders really worked, they just had some loose ideas about what it would be capable of. Still, it seems like magnetic levitation is a fair guess. The museum also had an exhibit on hovercrafts, which also float just above the ground, but instead of using magnets to do so, they use compressed air. They had a hovercraft that you could ride, but we didn't try it out, since we didn't want to take a turn away from any little kids!
The exhibit featured a lot of small models of the ships from the movies. There were also life size models of the robots, and some of the costumes used in the film. Here is me with a model of the landspeeder:
I know it looks like I'm way too fond of the landspeeder stuff, but there were soooo many people there! It was just hard to get any good photos, and this is where Nightfall was able to find some room to take my picture. However, I did get to pose with some of the other models as well:
Asuka, meanwhile was pretty impressed with the model of Chewbacca's home planet."
Asuka: "The explanation for this model told us that even though Chewbacca's home planet was created with a computer, the people planning out the shots and angles that we would be viewing the scene from needed a 3D model so they could visualize how the camera would move around. Even though computers can do a lot of things, people still sometimes need something physical to work with. Here's another picture of the model where I'm not in the shot, so you can see it a little better":
"Nightfall also got a picture of Chewbacca (and some other Wookie)'s costume"
"I also got to see a model of an At-At."
Asuka: "We didn't get to pose with it, because of all the people, but here's a photo of the Falcon. I wanted to ride on it, but it was in a glass case. Darn!"
Rei: "Aside from the models, most of the rest of the educational content was about robotics. There were various interactive exhibits where you could learn different things about robotics. We didn't really take the time to try these exhibits out ourselves, but we did watch some of the kids playing with them. There was one exhibit where you could build your own robot out of spare parts. That exhibit was kind of complicated, and there weren't so many people around it. There was also an exhibit where you could try to knock a robot off balance (testing gyroscopes maybe?) and another where you could try to make a robot walk by pushing a series of buttons that controlled each individual motion involved in walking. That exhibit was showing you how very complicated walking is. People and animals can do it instinctively, but it's pretty hard to program a robot to do it! There was also an exhibit displaying facial recognition. This is another thing people can do easily, but which is very hard for robots. The robot in this exhibit was supposed to play peek-a-boo with you, but the masks you were supposed ot use to "hide" from it were missing. This robot could talk, and lots of people stopped to listen to it, but most people didn't seem to understand what it was doing and got bored with it quickly. It said some pretty funny things tho, including random movie quotes. At one point it said 'I see dead people', which I found a little alarming even tho I knew it was a programmed response! I tried to snap a picture of the read-out that went with that, but I wasn't quick enough! I did catch this one tho, which I thought was pretty funny"
Asuka: "In the center of the exhibit hall there was a movie/presentation about robots. It was set up to be a dialog between C3P0 and the woman who created Kismet. Kismet is a robot that is supposed to use body language to show emotions. The scientists working on that robot wanted to make something people could easily relate to, and body language and emotion are an important part of communication. The lack of these things is what makes robots in science fiction movies scary. The scientist in the presentation wanted 3PO (and the audience) to understand that a robot that worked like R2 would actually be pretty incredible. This was a decent exhibit for a kid, probably, but it paled in comparison to the earlier demonstration we had seen with QRIO. Talking about real-life robots was not nearly as cool as seeing one in action!"
Rei: Anyway, we've gone on long enough here, and I think what that facial recognition robot said is pretty apt - it's time for a nap! In this case, a fairly long one that will end when the sun comes up!!"
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