Now we’re on to slightly more recent history, featuring an Aladdin lunch box thermos from 1976. The whereabouts of the lunch box – we’re assuming there was one, that’s how we recall our childhood – remain unknown.
It’s a full-on Avengers gathering, long before the juggernaut film universe took over the screens. The Amazing Spider-Man! Captain America!
Hulk pants!
The Incredible Hulk! Scarlet Witch! (Right? We’re not 100% caught up on pop culture down here in the basement.)
The winged helmet really is a nice touch.
Thor, God of Thunder! Iron Man!
And the rest!
At last, Vision!
Okay, we had to look him up. We really are behind on the whole cinematic universe thing.
This odd-looking 8-inch globe occasionally comes out to illustrate the wobbly rotation of Earth’s precession, though it’s a pain to use and too small to see at a distance. Anymore, a gyroscope illustrates the concept more easily, so this old globe lives back in storage.
And when we say old, we mean it.
“Terrestrial Globe.”
Okay, we jest about the “terrestrial globe” part. We have one moon globe around here, plenty of celestial sphere globes, including a big, fancy one also by W. & A.K. Johnston at the Observatory. If you want one of your own, an antiques dealer in Portland, OR is offering one just like ours for $6,500.
It does note copyright, but with no date. So how old could this be?
Clues!
French West Africa existed from 1895 to 1958. Let’s begin with that range and see how much we can trim it down.
1895 | 1958
More clues!
French Indochina existed from 1887 to 1954, so now we’re at:
1895 | 1954
We’re guessing that the big pinkish smear of India is the British Raj, 1858 to 1947.
1895 | 1947
Siam existed well earlier than that – argue for whatever – but changed to Thailand in 1939, so that gets us to:
1895 | 1939
We’re probably missing clues, not being historians!
Persia brings some uncertainty, at least when used by a Scottish cartographer in the window we’re assuming, but let’s put the name change from Persia to Iran in about 1935. It’s a guess, but so is the rest of this.
1895 | 1935
Arabia is also a little vague, so we’re going to assign a range of 1902 (the return of Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and the capture of Riyadh from the Ottoman Empire) until 1930, the founding of the state of Saudi Arabia. We’re more confident about the latter date, but that’s the one that matters more.
1902 | 1930
Because we can also see Transjordan, the British-drawn territory which existed from 1921 until 1946. That further narrows our window to:
1921 | 1930
Shown: one big honkin’ nation-state.
At last, we have one very big clue: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Sure, we remember the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, but we know the globe’s older than that. We also know, from high school history class, that the U.S.S.R. came about following the Russian Revolution, which trims our earliest date to 1922.
1922 | 1930
So, an eight-year window, making this little globe about a century old. Probably. A lot can happen in a hundred years.
Not pictured: lowbush blueberries, which are already all eaten.
Physics doesn’t rely on field work as much as some other disciplines – biology, geology – but sometimes it’s necessary and the fresh air does us good. So do the occasional wild treats found along the trail.
Just be sure to share them with the local bears and birds!
In great big boxes full of boxes, the toys begin to arrive. We stash them in corners, in front of other shelves, any place mostly out of the way before separating, sorting, packing, and distributing.
Three hundred yo-yos, Imperials and Butterflies, in an assortment of colors. Every box is full of surprises!
Because sometimes you need to seal up a joint, and the materials that can do the job don’t play well with adhesives. When working with Delrin, you’re thankful for the excellent machinability, less so for how much of a struggle it is to get anything to stick to it. Could be worse, right? Could be PTFE (Teflon).
Even this silicone sealant is a “sort-of” solution, and it sticks to everything. Always threatens to make a real mess of things. But it’s reliable for waterproofing and can take a variety of abuses from heat to chemicals. And it comes on a “job-size package.”
Having just gone through about a dozen of these things on a single job, we may take some issue with that descriptor. And the rather optimistic 10-20 minutes to being tack-free. But it’s still impressive and effective stuff.
And compared to some other goop around here, doesn’t stink to high heaven.
We have a lot of resources here on campus, and we love making friends. The folks at Outdoor Education & Leadership are fast becoming our regular summer activity partners, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
Physicists and astronomers really ought to do more field work.
On further reflection, it was probably contamination after the return to Earth, but we still like the idea of mouth bacteria being just fine with two and half years on the Moon.
