Regina

Spent yesterday driving to Regina and then trying to find a single interesting thing to do in Regina. Their motto should be, "Sorry, We're Not Saskatoon". Ended up going to the science centre, which only had a couple of other patrons. This gave Archie and I plenty of time to learn about bubbles and how pulley systems work. They had three pulleys; one loop, two loop and three loop. You would sit in a chair and raise and lower the chair via the pulley. The more loops, the easier it was to pull the weight. The fun part for me is that the pulleys were also different colours. This allowed me to push Archie to the edge of madness by insisting that the weight was based on the colour rather than number of loops.

Archie: The mechanical advantage of a pulley system can be analyzed using free body diagrams which balance the tension force in the rope with the force of gravity on the load. A force balance on a free body that includes the load, W, and n supporting sections of a rope with tension T, yields . . . 

Thus, the mechanical advantage of the system is equal to the number of sections of rope supporting the load.

Me: No, listen, I totally get what you're saying, the red one is easier  

Today we took a side trip to Moose Jaw, the home of the world's largest moose statue, Mac the Moose. Now, I've seen large moose statues before. Who hasn't. But wow, this one was exactly the same as the others, just slightly larger.

This was followed by a visit to the Moose Jaw tunnels and the Passage to Fortune tour. This tells the tale of the appalling conditions early Chinese immigrants to Canada lived in. During the tour the guide takes on the character of a ruthless, racist laundry manager who despises the Chinese immigrants but must tolerate them because the owner insists on using the cheap labour. To be quite honest I didn't see much of a difference between the character and the guide. I told Archie that since she's possibly the only Chinese person that's ever taken the tour she should demand restitution on behalf of her people.