All Things Holland

Time for a (boring?) science post. I've been siting on this one for a while.  Pieter van Musschenbroek was born in 1692 and is credited with building the first capacitor. (time for me to educate you) A capacitor is a device that stores electricity to be used later. His device was called a Leyden jar, named after the city he invented it in. Leiden in the Netherlands. Similar to a battery but it's not creating electricity through a chemical reaction it is only storing it. This Leyden jar helped in the creation of Guillermo Marconi's device that replaced the telegraph system and paved the way for AM Radio.   This was the only video that didn't have an incredibly nerdy guy talk (one had him getting shocked which was awesome) The rod they push in 'charges' up the device to the right. The 'bouncing' metal pieces are there for your own personal benefit to show that it has electricity running through it. The tank wrapped in foil filled with water to

Finally I have found another song in Dutch that doesn't make me want to rip my ears off my head.  Although the music video is very strange, the music is very mellow and beachy. 

So I couldn't sleep tonight so I thought I write my next blog entry about a place where you could sleep. See what I did there? That's called a 'segway'. I think. Recently MSN had an interesting article entitled '10 unique structures transformed into astonishing homes'. Structure 3 was a Parksite Ambulance Garage in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Here's the description from that article. "This 2,800-square-foot living space was converted in 2008 from an ambulance garage. The Doepel Strijkers team transformed what was a flat space into a multilevel[ed] habitation by creating a dugout in the center. [This] dugout also created room for a second level. The bedrooms are suspended over the sunken kitchen area in a polycarbonate 'light box' with integrated LED lights. The kitchen has custom cupboards. [Orange blocks] on the stairs to the living room act as a seating [area] or tables. A new glass wall looks out to the greenery of a park." If you search Doe

If you saw this on the beach you probably would be curious but wouldn't think anything of it. But what if it started to walk toward you? Click HERE. to see what that would look like and visit the website. If you search youtube for Theo Jansen you can find many many more of his creations. Here is the video I saw that intrigued me enough to pass it on to you guys. CLICK . Thanks Wallace and Gromit! These crazy inventions are the works of Theo Jansen a Kinetic Sculptor from the Netherlands. His creations are made out of PVC pipe, water bottles, and plastic tarps. Nothing else. No motors or anything like that. They run off of air power. Currently he's working on a device the will enable his 'creatures' to sense water (ocean) and be able to avoid it. His goal is to make them self sufficient. They are even equipped with bottles to 'trap' the air using air pressure for when the wind isn't available. He began this unique obsession in 1990. His website Strandbeest (