As many of you may know, we recently spent a few weeks in Japan on our honeymoon. Amongst many other things, we were struck by the attention to detail in design of many otherwise quotidian objects.
Sewer covering, 04:51:2F:09Sewer covering 03:51:2F:09Walking to the subway, it tells you how far you have to go.Inside the subway station, they number the stations to tell you where you are, where you’re going, and in what direction that is.Turning around, you can check which car you should get into to disembark at the optimal place at your destination.They also show you which lines are delayed…And even the difference between trains that are late and those that are stopped!Disembarking at your station, you see a side-view map of where the station layout can take you, along with a list of attractions at each of the (many) station exits.You can also see the exits in overhead view.A close up, complete with “You are here.”It was difficult to capture in pictures, but outside the elevators, they chimed once to tell you which one was going to pick you up, and then chimed twice to say the elevator was arriving.This particular elevator animated the direction of travel on the inside.This was one of the cooler exhibits at the science museum.It rotates! You can see all the skeleton form (almost) all angles.Near and dear to my heart, can you guess what this one is? (Note that it’s in 3-D for extra intuitiveness on the topic.)This is also a topic that is difficult to convey, and where 3-D helps a lot.It’s the whole family! (That we know of, so far.)Yes, they did have a live, working spectrographic demo.
XKCD covered Hertzsprung-Russell Diagrams recently:
https://xkcd.com/2009/