Firenze and Galileo

Florence must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world - it certainly is the most gorgeous city that I have ever been in (Tokyo comes close, but it is beautiful in an entirely different way). I regret not getting more photographs of Florence, but both me and my camera were melting in the heatwave that's been hitting Europe over the last couple of days - which is why I look so sweaty in these photos, by the way - and I spent the majority of my time either in air-conditioned museums or sipping on iced orange juice in the shade! Being the massive geek that I am, I wore this painting skirt to visit a bunch of Renaissance art museums (even though I don't have any idea what the painting on the skirt is - maybe I was hoping to find its original, haha. Can someone more art-literate than me help me out?) I got to see Michelangelo's David, a whole heap of Renaissance artworks and sculptures, and basically act like a hot, sweaty tourist all day. It was pretty great. shirt - Sportsgirl skirt - c/o Romwe shoes - Asos socks - c/o OASAP bag - Thrifted belt- Thrifted necklace - Claire's One of the most famous scientists of the Renaissance, from the Florence region of Italy is Galileo Galilei, who is probably more responsible for modern science as we know it than any other single person who has lived. The first person to point a telescope at the sky, he confirmed that the Earth revolved around the sun as well as discovering the moons of Jupiter and that the Milky Way was made up of stars. He set up the foundations for Issac Newton's laws of motion. He also came up with the concept of the modern experiment, featuring a hypothesis and the comparing of two conditions with controlled variables; in his time, the idea of "science" largely consisted of sitting around and thinking about things rather than conducting objective experiments. More recently, the Galileo spacecraft, launched by NASA in the 1980s, explored Jupiter and its moons, collecting evidence for water on Europa and exploring Io's volcanoes. And that's your little bit of science history for the day ;) I just arrived in a little town in Croatia, and am planning on walking around and taking photos all day! I can't wait to share them all with you. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Send Me On My Way

Arrivederci, Australia! Right now, I'm sitting in a hotel room trying to use mobile internet to get this post out - and in just 6 hours from now, I am meant to be getting up and hopping on a plane (ugh, 6am flights!). Anyway, here is my outfit from the other day! I'm really loving stripey things right now, and thigh-high socks! (And I'll have a stripey shirt DIY up in a couple of days, ooh!) I've brought a few pairs of thigh-highs to Italy with me, too, but I don't know if I'll be able to wear them in the summer heat. It's going to be a shock going from winter (and constant rain) to the middle of a heatwave-summer. shirt - Cotton On overalls - Thrifted necklace - c/o MartofChina socks - c/o OASAP shoes - c/o Yeswalker hat - c/o Wholesale Anyway, wish me luck for my flight - I'll be doing some more blogging from Rome, I hope! (I don't have time for a science post right now, but you can read my post about the physics of air-flight, if you missed it the other day!) Oh, and one more thing - everytime I go travelling, I make sure that this song is on my phone: Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root (it's the Matilda song!) Even though I'm a super sciencey scientist and all, and try not to be superstitious... that song is the best for good travelling vibes ;) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Bambi and Mind Control

I've been stuck inside the house for far too long. It has not stopped raining in Sydney. I can't wait to trade it in for summer in a couple of days! I'm a very excited (and lucky) lady to be travelling again this year. But hey, look at this Les Folles Marquises necklace above - it reminds me of an Adventure Time character! It's sooooo cute, plus it's handmade. What do you think? shirt - Thrifted skirt - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises socks - c/o OASAP shoes - c/o Yeswalker beanie - Stolen from boyfriend Here's a bit of incredible science news from Italy. Giving mobility back to paralysed people using science! The man in the video below has not been able to walk, move or feel his legs for two years. This exoskeleton is now under his control, and has helped him to walk for the first time since he was in a car accident that severed his spinal cord. The exoskeleton is part of a project that aims to eventually give people movement by correlating brain-patterns to the exoskeleton, train them using virtual reality, and then allowing them to control it through thought alone. How cool it that? Check out the the Mindwalker website here and the video of it in action below! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Rainy Day & Silkworms

The rain has been relentless for the past few days in Sydney, and isn't forecast to stop for a sizeable chunk of the week. It's good in a way, because going from winter to summer in Italy next week will be made even lovelier after coming from such awful weather, but it's also very frustrating because I had about 50 different outfits to post here before I left! I have been wanting some kitty shoes for such a long time now, though I'm glad I held out for these ones because they actually fit me (unlike all the pairs I tried to squeeze my feet into while I was in Tokyo earlier this year). These ones are awesome - they are both suede and creeper-style with a slight heel, and, well, they have cat faces on them. And anything with a cat face is basically instantly fantastic. dress - c/o Sheinside belt - Vintage cardigan - Forever 21 (old) socks - c/o OASAP hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - c/o Sammydress I always wanted to design my own wedding dress, if I were to one day get married. I always thought that I'd just design the structure of the dress, but now that I'm going into molecular biology, maybe I'll be able to help make the fabric too - and own the geekiest dress ever. This dress was made out of silk from transgenic silkworms, who can produce glowing silk. Image source These glowing silkworms are created by inserting a sequence of DNA that encodes a glowing fluorescent protein into the same region of the DNA that encode the instructions for making silk proteins. So the silkworms are exactly the same as ordinary silkworms, and still make silk in the same way, except that their silk comes out glowing. The medical applications of silk are vast, and it is now commonly used in medicine and surgery. Because the body's immune system doesn't reject silk, it can be used to make artificial arteries and other tissues. But being able to work with a glowing material, that is clearly distinguishable from human flesh, could potentially make things are lot easier for surgeons! Although making a glowing dress out of the glowing silk maybe isn't as necessary an advance as making glowing arteries, it was a good way to draw attention to the research, and well, it's also pretty damn cool. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Hot Air Balloons and Aeroplanes

Les Folles Marquises, a gorgeous little etsy store, sent me some of the cutest ever necklaces! I can't even tell you how in love I am with this handmade doll necklace. I wore it to my exam as my good-luck charm (not that I'm at all superstitious nor believe she bestowed good luck upon me, but being able to look at the necklace during my exam did make me smile! Which has gotta help, right?) As a side note, Les Folles Marquises, according to google translate, is "The Crazy Canopies" in English - any French speakers want to tell me if that is at all correct? What a cute name for a cute store, though! And although you'll all know me as an advocate of cheap clothes, if something is handmade this well, it's definitely worth paying more for. I've been making some pretty great thrift-shop finds lately, like this pink cardigan and velvet fitted blazer. Every winter I only ever seem to have one cardigan and one coat which I end up wearing every day, which just makes winter even more depressing, so this year I am making an effort to own quite a few different coats, sweaters and cardigans so I can mix and match them (almost) as frequently as my dresses! Op-shops are definitely the best place to get coats and cardigans from, especially as they are usually under $10 - I don't think I've owned many "new" ones in quite a number of years. dress - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises cardigan - Thrifted blazer - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale socks - c/o OASAP shoes - Yeswalker And isn't this balloon-print Sheinside dress super cute, and just the perfect amount of quirky? Speaking of Sheinside, I have the winner of the Sheinside giveaway to announce. Is this you below? If so... congratulations! You have won a $100 gift voucher to spend at Sheinside. And I highly recommend the dress I am currently wearing ;) So I'm going on an plane to Italy in just a week's time from now. Whenever I go on an aeroplane, at at least one point in the flight I will freak out and go "HOW ARE WE POSSIBLY DOING THIS?!" Knowing really nothing about physics, I am as ignorant as caveman trying to comprehend a smartphone (in fact... I don't really know much about that one, either). I just think that the fact that something as big and heavy as a plane full of people hanging around apparently weightless in the air is insane. And if anyone asked me how planes stayed in the air, I probably wouldn't be able to give them a very good answer, either, apart from mumbling something vague about thrust and lift. And I like to know how things work, rather than just blindly accepting them as fact. So flight is actually kind of simple on the surface. There are four main forces all vying for dominance of your aircraft. You have thrust, which is what the engines provide - propelling you forward - drag, which pulls you backwards, weight, which drags you back down towards the earth, and lift, which is the one that holds you up in the air and is provided by the wings. Lift is the one that helps hold a super heavy object up in the air, and is the cause of my freaking-out. (Image source) Aeroplane wings give you lift, because of the relative differences in speed between a solid object (the wings) and a fluid object (the air). The wing deflects the air above and below the wing, splitting it into two directions. The shape of the wing makes sure that the air that goes over the top moves faster than the air on the bottom. And when air speeds up, its pressure drops, so there is more pressure pushing up from the bottom of the wing, than from the top of the wing. That's how you get lifted up into the air! The speed of sound is what is known as "Mach 1", and commercial planes don't fly this fast, however, the plane I am going on travels at Mach 0.85. That is 85% of the speed of sound, or about 280 metres per second. That is just a little over 1000 kilometres an hour (621 mph). That's... really, really fast. And a good way to segue into this XKCD comic. Speculative physics is even more fun than actual physics. If you could make a stereo fly past someone at twice the speed of sound (Mach 2), then would it sound like it was playing backwards to someone who was sitting by? The answer is yes, the song would sound like it was playing backwards. The stereo is flying faster than the sound it is playing can travel (sound travels at the speed of... well... sound), so the stereo would reach you first, followed by the sound it emitted one second ago, then two seconds ago, then three seconds ago, etc. I can hardly wrap my head around it, but I think that it is one of the coolest thought experiments ever (plus, it's an awesome fact to tell people at parties). Read the whole comic here (especially if you've never seen XKCD's 'What If?' site before.) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Rose Gardens and Space Telescopes

I am a very happy lady tonight, because I have finished my exams! I think my weeks of non-stop studying really paid off as well, which makes finishing them all the sweeter. Nonetheless, I am going to be doing some mad blogging for the next week or so before I head off overseas, so if you visit here daily you'll almost certainly see something new each time ;) Isn't this dress Sheinside sent me gorgeous? It just makes me want to have a picnic in a rose garden. Unfortunately I couldn't find any roses to take photos among - it being the middle of winter in Sydney and all. This pretty park did a good job serving as the backdrop, though. I was so happy with the shoes that Yeswalker sent me as part of a sponsored post a few months ago (these ones) that I went and bought a couple of pairs with my own money, these red ones included. They're soooo cute and comfortable, and were also sent with free postage. I got two pairs for $15 each which is seriously good. These are going to be my Italy-trip walking-shoes! (I will never ever wear practical walking shoes, not even for travelling. Sorry, feet, but runners are just too ugly.) dress - c/o Sheinside cardigan - Thrifted tights - c/o OASAP necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - Yeswalker You guys. This is the power of crowd-funding. 12,000 people (at the time I write this) have pledged money to a kickstarter project to fund an educational Space Telescope called ARKYD. There's 10 days left if you want to get yourself a "space selfie" (in fact, I think that's probably half the reason why the project has done so well. I am considering getting a space selfie of my favourite outfit just so I can put it on the blog in a science segment. If enough of you tell me that I should...). Right now though, I'm completely exhausted (and vaguely aware that I might be writing nonsense) so I will leave it at that. Good night from Sydney, and I hope you're all having/have had a super good day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr