Bern History Museum

The Bern Historical museum is an amazing building, built after the style of 18th century castles. at the fountain before the gate to the grounds of the museum, is modified bike pumps for water fight or just explore fluid dynamics. The nozzle was unmounted so that it could point anywhere.
The ticket pricing is a bit odd, with different prices for different exhibit visitation permission. The exhibit called the Einstein museum is the reason for our visit. The temporary exhibit at the time was about the moon landing, and the involvement that Bern and the rest of Switzerland had invested on the Apollo 11 expedition. The university in Bern had created a foil to capture particles emitted by the sun, called the solar wind. There was model of the equipment and parts of the original foil and support structure also. Another element that Switzerland had direct involvement in was the watches worn by the astronauts, they had a copy of the model used on display. Also in that exhibit was a table to demonstrate the pull of gravity and how that can be utilized in space flight. I enjoyed playing with this for some time. You would roll a metal marble down a ramp at a planet and the magnet under it would curve the marbles trajectory. This conception of  gravity could have been included in the area of what discoveries Einstein's papers on relativity caused.
The section of the museum that pointed out the long history that Bern has of housing a Jewish community was a bit of a surprise, in that it was so quickly mentioned and given such proof. Having a part of a tomb stone from the middle ages present. The info on the stone also stated how the Jewish cemetery was separate from the Christian cemetery.
This fit the later content of Einstein's life promoting the creation of a Jewish state or Israel after WWII. The content presented on the destruction of world war II was very heavy, the depictions of the suffering and the inclusion of video proof of the German war crimes, and the room panorama of the bombing of Hiroshima really hit me.
I enjoyed how the museum did not shy away from the failings of Einstein's personal life, having a family tree showing which cousin was his second wife. the inclusion of the letters to his first wife before the marriage during and after. Also the lose contact that he had with is first two sons.

Bern History Museum - Moon Landing

     The museum in Bern did a great job showing us about Einstein and his life. It also had interesting displays on the German influence in Bern. However, one thing that I was not expecting to learn about there was the first moon landing accomplished by the US.
     It was very surprising to see that there was a whole exhibit on Bern's influence on the moon landing. Bern had influenced the moon landing in multiple ways that I had never known even though I had learned about the moon landing many times before. Since many of us know that Switzerland is known for making watches it is not as much of a surprise that Bern was asked to make highly accurate watches that could survive a trip to space. What is more surprising is that Buzz Aldrin helped conduct an experiment on solar wind that was created at the University of Bern before the cameras were even rolling. We always remember seeing the footage of the first man walking on the moon, but not very many people realize that it holds a connection to Bern, Switzerland.

Einstein Museum

After visiting the Einsteinhaus in Bern, I also went to the Einstein Museum. The museum was a great educational addition because it discussed a lot of the historical context surrounding Einstein's life, the most notable event probably being World War II. I learned that despite Einstein's fame as a scientific figurehead, the US government was still skeptical of him during WWII due to his German citizenship. Though Einstein resided in the US at the time, he was not allowed to participate in the Manhattan Project and was put under close FBI surveillance throughout the war. This was interesting to me because it shows how distrustful countries were of each other at that time; it did not matter that Einstein was a prominent scientific figure, his German origin still made him a potential threat to the US. Overall, I enjoyed visiting the Einsteinhaus and Einstein Museum because they both provided background information on Einstein's life and character, which did not always portray him in the positive light he is painted in today.

Musuem of Einstein

During our day trip to Bern, we visited the musuem of Einstein. It had other stuff in it but was many focused on his life time, and anything and everything that pertained to his life. I found something interesting in that musuem that stood out more than anything. It was alittle plaque that stated that Einstein was very opposed to the creation and use of the atomic bomb. He held protests against his creation, which i found interesting, because i think he realized the power behind his work, and the potiental dangerous consequences of using the bomb.

Albert Einstein

I thought that the Einstein house in Bern, Switzerland was very interesting to see and gave me an inside view on what his personal life was like. Something I learned at the Einstein house was that his personal life was not perfect since his marriage failed and he eventually went on to marry his cousin and had many affairs during their relationship. I also learned that he struggled in the beginning of his career which is an important reminder of just because people are successful in their careers, it does not always mean that the beginning was successful and that they did not have to endure struggles to get to where they ended up. 

From the Einstein portion of the museum we visited in Bern, I learned that he made a patent for the hearing aid in 1929. I did not know he was involved in the history of hearing aids and I thought it was very salient to me since I wear a hearing aid. 

History of Science Museum- the battery

Something I learned at the History of Science Museum in Geneva is how the first battery was made. It was made with zinc/copper with sulfuric acid mixed with water. In my head, I wouldve thought that the first battery would be made for things like electricity for houses, cars, etc. But I learned that this battery was often used for entertainment purposes as well as a gift for other people.

CERN

     The CERN lab really enforces the idea that even though we have made huge leaps in bounds in science, there is still a lot left for humanity to discover. It's crazy to think that Bosons were such a recent discovery that I didn't learn about them in high school physics, but future generations will.
     It was interesting learning how they conduct experiments and test new theories at CERN. A lot goes into testing, collecting and analyzing new data to confirm or disprove a theory. I was impressed to learn that they keep the data completely separate at two of the locations of the LHC; ATLAS and CMS. The data is collected and analyzed completely separately then compared so that there can be no bias to influence interpretation or contamination of the data. They want to continue to stick to true science at CERN which is very responsible of them and allows them to have so much success.

     Some of the information I learned that surprised me was how much CERN has contributed to my field of study; Software Engineering. CERN made huge contributions in mass data storage because they needed to be able to store all the data they collected from their experiments. In addition they founded the World Wide Web to be able to share that data. This is obviously a huge contribution in not only software engineering and development, but to everyone that uses the internet today.