Exploratorium Visit
Hello!
I’m Haruna Minami, a freshman of Ehime university.
Today, I want to talk about my experience in Exploratorium which is the museum in San Francisco. In Exploratorium, you can explore the world through science, art and human perception. It is a really interesting museum because it has various tentative displays which we can’t see in other museums.
I have three amazing exhibitions I’m going to talk about.
The first one is “rotating wall”. That is like a small tent and the wall of it rotates. If you stand still inside of it, you gradually feel as if the wall stops rotating and you are moving. It is because our brain modified the information from eyes to make it more realistic. In this case, the wall rarely move and human move every time so you feel as if you are moving. It was an enjoying ride like a carousel for me.
The second one is “theremin”. It has a wood box with two metal rods. In the metal rods, weak electrical currents are moving. So moving your hands closer to or farther from the rods changes the frequency (or pitch) and amplitude (or volume) of these signals. I played the song “Happy Birthday to You” by moving my hands! Since I love music it was so interesting to me.
The third one is the short movie about the process of making proteins. I have already learned about most of this process but this movie was the easiest to understand. Thanks to this movie, my motivation to study goes up! Also, there were short movies about ATP, cell division, protein secretion. All of them were very nice to study.
In conclusion, I found many interesting displays and spend wonderful time in Exploratorium. Especially, I want to study about function of eyes and the mechanism of an optical illusion. If I come to San Francisco in the future, I want to visit Exploratorium again! Thank you for reading my post.
Power of 2 Film Screening
Hello!
I’m Haruna Minami, a freshman of Ehime University. This is my last posting to this blog.
On March 5th, we watched the movie “Power of Two” in Hirona’s room. This movie is about the twins who have Cystic Fibrosis and organ transplanted. It was made to advocate the organ donation in Japan. In fact, the number of the organ transplant in the U.S. is ten times as many as in Japan. Japan has one of the lowest rates of the organ transplant operation in developed countries. It was said that this fact is related to the incident called “Wada organ transplant”. The recipient of the organ plant didn’t recover completely after the operation while the donor might not have been brain-dead at the time of the operation. Because of these issues, the image of an organ donation became negative in Japan. But I think the different image of an organ donation between the U.S. and Japan really comes from the difference of those cultures. For example, Japanese tend not to regard a brain death as a human death. So they hesitate to take out organs from a brain-dead person.
I had not decided whether I should be a donor when I am brain-dead. But now, I think I should be. If my organ is transplanted to someone, he or she can live with my organ. That means I can help others even after I die. “It is unfair that whether or not you can get an organ transplanted and live longer depends on where you were born.” I strongly agree with this. I want Japanese to think deeply about organ donation and notice serious situation of Japan. Most Japanese get used to seeing someone who wants to have an organ transplanted calling for raising money in need but this is not a normal scene in other countries. I’ll recommend this movie to my friends and I hope the image of organ donation gets better.
Thank you for reading my posting!
