Instructions 1a)
Enter the Downing Site through the gates on Downing Street. Turn left. You will see a flight of stone steps with two bears at the bottom. The museum is at the bottom of the stairs.
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Question 1a)
What was the first name of the person after whom the museum is named?
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Instructions 1b)
Go into the museum and stop in the first room that is next to the entrance. Look at the specimens that are in here.
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Question 1b)
What animal was found in the local village of Barrington and how old is it? |
Instructions 1c)
Go back in geological time towards Oak Wing. There is a new exhibition with a Jurassic plesiosaur in the centre that would have been alive over 150 million years ago. Go into the Oak Wing beyond Professor Sedgewick's statue.
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Question 1c)
Whose rock collection is located around the Woodwardian pew? |
Instructions 1d)
You will find the most ancient fossils in this area of the museum. The Burgess Shales are famous or the preservation of soft bodies animals of great diversity. They belonged to the Cambrian Period, around 530 million years ago. |
Question 1d)
Which modern Cambridge palaeontologist helped to bring the Burgess Shales to Cambridge? |
Instructions 2a)
Leave the museum and go back onto Downing Street. Turn left, cross the road and enter the New Museum Site through the narrow entrance opposite Tennis Court Road. The steps on the right and side lead to the University Department of Zoology Museum. Go inside the museum and look at the great range of recent and fossil animals collected since 1814. Find the fish c0llection in the foyer. |
Question 2a)
Who originally collected these fish? |
Instructions 2b)
Go outside the museum and climb some stairs to reach a very large skeleton suspended above the museum. |
Question 2b)
What animal did the skeleton come from? |
Instructions 3a)
Walk towards the babbage lecture theatre. The theatre was named after Charles Babage who helped set up the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831. |
Question 3a)
Between which years was Babbage Lucasian Professor at the University and with what development was he associated? |
Instructions 3b)
Find the plaque on the wall near to the Babbage lecture theatre commemorating the work of Maurice Wilkes. |
Question 3b)
What year did Wilkes develop EDSAC and for what is EDSAC an abbreviation? |
Instructions 3c)and 3d)
Cross the car park towards the Austin building. You will find a plaque on the wall commemorating the discovery of the structure of DNA. |
Question 3c)
Who discovered the structure of DNA and what year was the Nobel prize awarded?
Question 3d)
Who was the Newnham College graduate who also worked on the structure of DNA? |
Instructions 4a)
Walk through the narrow passage alongside the Austin Building and find the Mond building. This now houses the University Aerial Survey Department. It was built in 1933 by the Royal Society so that the Russian physicist, Peter Kapitza, could work on very powerful magnetic fields. Kapitza had a pet name for his research supervisor, Sir Ernest Rutherford, which reflected his character in the laboratory. This animal which is carved in to the side of the Mond Building is now also the symbol for the Cavendish Laboratory. |
Question 4a)
What is this animal? |
Instructions 4b)
Walk through the gates into Free School Lane. Turn left. Find the plaque on the wall of the 'Old' Cavendish Laboratory that commemorates the discovery of the electron. |
Question 4b)
Who discovered the electron and in what year? |
Instructions 5
The Cavendish laboratory on this site was very active in developing new ideas in science for nearly 150 years. The new Cavendish now occupies a large site to the west of Cambridge. Continue along Free School Lane and go in to the Whipple museum of the History of Science which was founded in 1944 to house many instruments used in Colleges and Faculties of the University from the sixteenth century onwards. Find the first edition of Newton's Principia Mathematica, parts of Charles Babbage's difference engine and botanical drawings by Charles Darwin. |
Question 5
What year was Newton's Principia Mathematica first published? |
Instructions 6
Leave the museum, turn right and retrace your steps along Free School Lane. The Saxon Church at the junction of Free School Lane and Bene't Street was built around 1025. The round holes in the tower were used by the church owls. Continue to walk along Bene't street and turn right in to King's Parade past King's College on your left. Have a look inside the chapel built in 1440 which has been described as 'the loveliest in England'. You could then walk down the river to watch the punts, or count the stone balls on Clare bridge!
Turn left along Senate House Passage and find the Gate of Honour of Gonville and Caius ( pronounced keys) College. Students passed through this gate to graduate. |
Question 6
What is painted on the sides of the tower on top of the gate? |
Instructions 7a)
Return to Trinity Street and walk on the pavement opposite Gonville and Cauis College. Look for the stone heads high up on the college building including the founder of the college, John Caius. Find the head of Sir Thomas Gresham, graduate ofthe college. He set up Gresham college in the City of London in 1596. the Royal Society first met at Gresham College. The fourth head, near the college entrance, is that of William Harvey, who was also a Cauis medical graduate. |
Question 7a)
What did Harvey discover and describe in 1628? |
Instructions 7b)
The sixth head is that of another Professor of Physic who raised the status of medicine within the University. |
Question 7b)
What was his name and what organ of the body is he associated with? |
Instructions 8a)
Continue along Trinity Street and stand in the paved area facing the front of the great Gate of Trinity College. Look carefully at the object in the right hand of the statue of Henry VIII. It is the result of a student prank. You might recognise the location of the photo on the index of this web site. Isaac Newton may well have looked out onto Trinity Street through the bay windows on the first floor. The tree on the lawn in front of the windows is thought to be a descendant of the original apple tree from Newton's home in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. |
Question 8a)
How many Trinity (Science and Medicine) Nobel Laureates are on record in March 2000? |
Instructions 8b)
Stand with your back to the centre of the doors of the Great Gate. Take five paces forward (towards the Post Office on the opposite side of the road). Find a pinkish rock among the cobbles on the ground which has been inscribed by a Trinity geologist. This man brought the rock back from a Norwegian glacier and died in 1989 aged 101 years old. |
Question 8b)
What were the geologist's initials? |
Instructions 9
Walk along Trinity Street which now become St John's Street and stop opposite the front gate. This gate was completed in 1516. The carving is the coat of arms of the foundress Lady Margaret Beaufort. The curious beasts on either side are yales, mythical animals having elephants' tails, antelopes' bodies and goats' heads. Look carefully on the flowery painted panel on the right hand side. |
Question 9
What animals can you see on this panel and what do they appear to be doing? |
Instructions 10
Continue along St John's Street and turn left into Bridge Street. Cross the road and turn down Portugal Place. Walk along Portugal Place until it bends away to the right. You will find the house in which Francis Crick lived when he was in Cambridge. |
Question 10
What is fixed to the front of the house above the door? |
