Aug 25: Colour and The Tower of London

This morning's lecture featured colour and was playfully named "Colour is Fun." This lecture focused more on our perception of light that previous demonstrations on the subject, and we learned some pretty amazing things about the incredibly complex process of our perception of colour. We learned about mixing colours (the colour "maths"), different methods of measuring colour, and the effects of different light sources on our vision. We also learned that while most humans have 3 sensors for colours (3 dimensional colour perception,) there is a certain type of shrimp that has 13. Whoa.

The lecture is about to begin! Lots of equipment up there.

A diffraction grating splits white light to show the visible spectrum.

Here the lecture is demonstrating the mixing of colours to produce another colour. When mixing light in this way, the primary colours are red, green and blue (additive mixing). When using paint, the primary colours are red, blue, and yellow (subtractive mixing).

Once the lecture was over, I promptly made my exit and scooted off to the tubes. I made my way to the Tower of London and bought myself admission, and the rest is in pictures!

Where the grass is now used to be the moat.

Rounded tower at the entrance. These towers only became a part of European castles after the Crusades, during which the cylindrical construction of Islamic turrets proved to be more resilient than square towers to many types of siege techniques.

In we go! I've always wanted to go inside a real Medieval castle!

The guide for our tour was absolutely hilarious.

A smaller version of the mighty trebuchet.

This space between the outer wall and the inner wall is called the Killing Floor. The guide explained that his expertise was in medieval defense architecture and made a quip about the crowd getting stuck with him. I guess he didn't see how immensely interested I was!

That wall is a formidable sight.

The keep itself (called the White Tower).

Deeper into the castle, the guide pointed out that the architecture became more square.

Courtyard, and the Tower Bridge in the background.

I couldn't help myself. What a queer sight.

Knights!

Armour! I didn't have the sense to record whose armour this was, but this was the suit of a real past king of England. 

A really big book..?

An arrangement of pole-arms... yikes. 

This, good friends and family, is a gun-shield.

Very cool.

That certificate near the floor indicates that this is one of the largest suits of armour in the world (Guinness World Records).

Oh my goodness... that thing shot cannon balls the size of a beach ball.

This is me standing in what was once the moat. I don't think I'll be storming this fortress on my own!

It was a phenomenal experience. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!