Tsukuba, Science City (Part Deux) and a bus ride

Today is the first day of a 3-days weekend. (Monday is "Sea Day".) I've decided to continue my exploration of Tsukuba "Science City" by visiting the two other places in my itinerary: AIST's Geological Museum and KEK Communication Plaza.

The first place I've visited is the Geological Museum, which is located to the Tsukuba Science Center I went to last time.

One thing I can say is that "there's a lot of rocks here!" I'm not really interested in rocks, so let's just move on to the pictures.

The ceiling is a map of Japan marked with major earthquakes.

Some beautiful rocks!

More rocks

And more rocks

The evolution of Human

The periodic table... with real rocks

The screen resolution is really frightening!

Outdoor rock exhibit

Some stamp for touring activities (?)

Let's move on to the next place, KEK. KEK stands for "Kou Enerugi kasokuki Kenkyuu kikou" which means "High Energy Accelerator Research Organization". At KEK, they have physical accelerators which are used to attempt to understand the origin of the universe.

But first, I have to get to KEK first! KEK is not really reachable by bicycle since it's quite far, so I had to take the bus. This is the first time I've took a local bus in Japan, so I'll write about it a bit. The bus I took was ran by "TsukuBus"

Getting on the bus at Tsukuba Center

The exit is in the front, with a payment machine and a coin exchange machine.

The display shows the next station and the fee based on where you got on

If you got on at the terminal, you won't get a ticket. But if you got on somewhere else, you will get a ticket which will allow you to pay the lower price.

Press the button to get down at the next station.

And finally, I've reached KEK!

First, I've got a visitor badge from the guard and was directed to the communication plaza (public display).

There, I got an English "guide pen". By tapping the pen to a specific place on the guide book (it was overlaid with a dotted pattern for use with optical scanning), it will play an audio file associated with the exhibit.

Next, let's look at the exhibits.

Weak force and strong force. I've heard about them many times but I still don't know what they are.

"Wonder Quarks" allows me to interact with (kick around) particles in a simulation.

A model of an accelerator

Anyone remember J. J. Thomson from their chemistry class?

Measuring ambient cosmic rays

There are also other displays, but the ones I've shown here were the interesting ones. This visit to KEK led me to one conclusion, "Physics is interesting, unless you're in Physics class".

And it's time to go back to Tsukuba Center!