Palais de la découverte

Molly and Betsy liked this science museum, near the grand palais, so much that we went on two different days. Molly got to participate in several of the demonstrations:


Here, she's shattering a zinc ribbon that had been dipped in liquid air.





Here, she and some others are trying to pull apart two vacuum-sealed hemispheres. This presentation was not in English, but the woman giving the talk was kind to us and spoke slowly en français.



Here she is at 300,000 volts. We felt bad about this one -- the presentation was scheduled to be given in English, which is why we were there in the first place. But when the presenter asked at the beginning about everyone's preferred language, there was a whole chorus of "français" followed by a sheepish "anglais" from us. The whole auditorium emptied and there were just the three of us left: Dave, Molly and Betsy. She gave her talk anyway, and of course in a talk requiring two different volunteers, Dave and Molly both got called up front to borrow a whole bunch of electrons for a few minutes.