Ah Switzerland – the land of chocolate, Heidi, the Alps, and army knives. The national museum in Zurich currently has an exhibit on the latter so a few of us went to check it out. In addition to the exhibit, you were able to assemble your very own Swiss army knife. You’d think three MIT engineers would have an easier time machining a Swiss army knife but wow are there way more parts than I was expecting. Luckily we had Swiss army knife personnel on hand to guide us at every step … in German … but hey pantomiming translates across national tongues.
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| Two MIT engineers hard at work - well Asvin's supervising the work on his knife |
I learned that I had better continue working towards a thesis as I do not have a future career in assembling Swiss army knives.
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| Sweet Success! |
They may not be as famous as Niagara Falls, but the Rheinfall waterfalls about thirty minutes outside of Zurich are the biggest waterfalls in Europe. After knife building, we struck out to see how they compared to Niagara. What we discovered is that “biggest” is a bit of a misnomer as the falls have the largest volume of water passing over them and are not very high.
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| Rheinfall |
Regardless, the falls are in a beautiful setting with the Laufen Castle resting on a cliff overlooking the falls. We had a grand time taking a Niagara-style boat out to the falls where we felt the full force of the “biggest” distinction and got rather wet.
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| Gang with the Rheinfalls |
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