It's traditional to have some sort of a celebration at the end of a project.
We had a real nice one at the institute in Praha.
The two pictures below are pictures of a video that was shown on a large movie
screen at the party, so they aren't very good. The video was shot by Rudolf
Brinkmann of one of the large quarry shots that were used to generate shock
waves for the experiment.
You can see the people standing next to the crater.
It wouldn't be a party in the Czech Republic without beer. Jan Zednik, head of the Seismological Services at the institute, was our bartender. Either that or he just always happened to be hanging around the beer tap every time I came back for more. I'd never seen the device below before, but then maybe I've just lived a sheltered life. We had a keg of beer at the party. All I've ever seen in the U.S. is the keg sitting in a wash tub full of ice to cool the beer. Here tubes carried the beer from the keg to a small unit that used electricity to cool the beer on the spot. I need one of those.
Photo by ??
The party was both inside and outside, and included many of the people that worked on the project from the institute, and some family members. The painting covering the wall in the picture below was rather interesting, but I forgot to come back after the party and take a good picture of it. It was of a failed attempt by explorers to reach the North Pole. It's not clear which expedition is depicted. You can see a polar bear taking an interest in the bodies of the frozen explorers. It was painted in the late 1800's.
Photo by Jan Zednik
2018-03-06