Day 5: Our First College Visit and More

 Today, we did not go to work, but visited the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee!! After a quick overview of the school's statistics and the application process in general, we had a walking tour of the campus. UW Milwaukee is very environmentally conscious. From the 23rd floor of one of the dorms, we saw two greenroofs and solar panels. In the library, we saw a monitor that displayed the energy and water usage in a number of buildings on campus. In one dorm, a large amount of water was used between 7 and 8 AM while another dorm had almost none. Our tour guide, Amanda, explained that the first dorm was full of incoming freshman who were getting ready for their second day of orientation and that the second dorm had barely any residents. On another screen, we saw the amount of energy produced by the solar panels on the library. We found out that UW Milwaukee is the only school in the country that has a school of fresh water sciences. And Marissa loved that there are protected woods on campus that the students can hike through to get to their classes.

After our tour, we went to the Discovery World Museum located on Lake Michigan. The museum was filled with interactive exhibits!

In the picture below you can see emily laying on a bed of nails that raised out of a plastic case! 

 

Here's Joan on the bed of nails. She looks like she's about to cry!

We went into the 3D simulator, which took us on a tour of our solar system, and we got to view a house in China and the Colosseum. The solar system tour was the most interactive, and it showed us all the planets.

We often felt like we were almost falling in space, and when we were going through the asteroid belt, the asteroids often shocked us by seeming as though they hit us square in the face. 

We learned about bio-mimicry, and how the bionic car used the body plan of the Boxfish to create the design of the body of the car to make it more energy efficient. 

In a section on archeology we saw this video that shows the layered CT scans through a 3000 year old Egyptian mummy!  It is amazing to see all of the layers of the body come through!!

 Then we ran on the human sized hamster wheel. We ran as fast as we could and still couldn't light up the bulb brightly.

We went through the Les Paul House of Sound, where we saw many different guitars, and ways we could hear and record music. We lost Emily to the music while she was playing around with the music recordings. There was also an old Nintendo where we tried to play an old Legend of Zelda game. There were a lot of different nostalgic items such as the phonograph and the old player piano - that played by itself. It was a lot of fun to play with all the old music instruments. 

After the sound exhibit, we ate lunch by Lake Michigan and enjoyed the beautiful view!

Once we had filled our belly's, we went back into the museum and went into the aquarium, and we got to see different species of fish we've never seen before.

We also got to pet some of the marine life!! The stingrays felt slimy, but the sharks felt rough.

 A picture of Marissa on a TV screen inside the simulated research vessel - that is her reaction to the screaming children all around her!

 

We saw this one weird looking fish that had a platypus like nose called the Paddlefish, and when it opened its mouth, you could almost see its skeleton! 

 

And this weird fish that had no eyes!!






Aren't we cute under the waterfall?

Marissa Finally Let us Take a picture of her.....

We then went into the Machines 101 exhibit, and we saw multiple small wood automatons. We also did an airplane simulator, in which we all successfully landed our planes without crashing! 

After we finished our museum trip, we went down to Brady street, where we visited and shopped at multiple vintage shops. We ended the day with a visit to the Bastille Days street festival. We went to many different booths shopping mostly for jewelry and tried cheese curds and french beneights! They were good. 

We are now home enjoying leftovers and looking forward to bed.  Tomorrow is a another full day of hiking and horseback riding.