4.06 - Munich

I started the day with a proper (though meatless) German breakfast: one big-ass role with strawberry preserves, a hard-boiled egg, a slice of cheese, some musli, and apple juice. Though I smelled a bit, I did not shower. At this point I think my clothes just kind of smell, so showering won’t really make too much difference. I'll do my laundry once I get to Berlin.

After breakfast, and some Nina Simone and Muswell Hillbillies, I went to rent a bike. It's been rather cold here so far, but there's still no way to see a city quite like by bicycle. Give me a bike, a good map, a compass, and a few days, and I feel like I could get the hang of just about any city. But I do wish I'd brought some gloves. And €17 for a little over a day of wheel-based transportation is pretty damned expensive; comparatively my bike in Providence only cost me $35 to buy, but oh well.

Anyway, after getting lost about 1,000 times, stopping to pull out my map and re-orient myself, I finally made it to the English Gardens, a huge park in the Northeast part of downtown Munich which runs along the Iser River. After riding around the park for a little while my hands were pretty damn cold, and the sky was still quite overcast, so I decided to go to the Deutsches Museum. I got lost even more on the way there, and as it was nearing noon I stopped off for a pastry (which are quite cheap you can find just about everywhere in this city). With all the sausage and pastries these folks eat, and all the beer they drink, its a wonder they still generally appear to be rather healthy.


Finally, I got to the museum where I had to stretch the truth a little in order to get a student discount (I stupidly decided on the way to the airport that I wouldn't need my Brown ID, and took it out of my wallet). The place was amazing. I wish I'd gone there yesterday instead of just sitting around lounging and reading for most of the day. The museum basically encompasses the entire history of human technological and scientific innovation. I didn't even get to see a tenth of it, but the bridge, power machinery, and energy sections were all really neat. They had Rudolf Diesel’s original engine, and a lot of stuff about much of the other innovation going on around its creation. Unfortunately most of the physics and chemistry sections were only in German, and seemed a bit outdated. But even so, I could spend a week in that place without getting tired, or seeing everything.

Here's some interesting numbers:

available freshwater = 0.25% of global water supply

humans consume on average 2400 kilocalories (10,000 kJ)/day
90% of this energy is used just to maintain body temperature.

the sun supplies the earth with 1.4 x 10^18 kWh/year, or 15,000 x 1994 world energy consumption

current solar cell efficiency = 5-18%
max theoretical efficiency using silicon semiconductors = 27%
using tandem cells (different layered semiconductors) = 40%