Around the World in 14 Hours

World Travelers Stylin'

Hello! Jordan and Annie here to update you on our activities for Wednesday, May 21^st. We spent a full day in Epcot today with lots to report!

Fun with Mickey!

Behind the Seeds

35 Pound Winter Melons

We began the day with a look "Behind the Seeds" of Disney's greenhouses, where they grow a variety of plants and animals for both decoration and food. Our very knowledgeable tour guide, Jake, led us through greenhouses connected to the Living with the Land boat ride as well as through several "backstage" greenhouses that contained a wide range of both domestic and tropical specimens. In addition, we got to see Disney's Biotechnology Lab for Crop Improvement, cosponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture. In the lab, scientists were using a technique called tissue culture to produce thousands of plants without seeds, which is much faster and more efficient for mass production. Disney then uses many of these crops in restaurants throughout the parks and resorts. Yet even in their greenhouses, Disney always adds a little Disney magic... Giant tomato trees, Mickey Mouse-shaped cucumbers, and thirty five pound winter melons were just a few of the unique GMOs created in the lab. In addition, one of the greenhouses even contained a Mimosa Pudica (AKA Touch Me Not), which curled its leaves when touched. Overall, we really enjoyed the tour, which provided interesting information about scientific applications not commonly thought of in relation to Disney World.

Collecting Data

Data Collection Fun

Though the tour opened our eyes to the biology and chemistry associated with the greenhouses in Epcot, we were excited to get back to math and work on our project of creating a network map of the park. To do this, we needed a series of nodes, so each attraction in Epcot was marked as such. However, measuring the distance from every attraction to every other attraction in the entire park would be unbelievably time-consuming, so we took Len Testa’s advice of establishing (centralized) “way points” that one has to walk past in order to get to multiple attractions. In doing so, we minimized the number of edges in our network that we had to measure, since we could instead measure distances from attractions to only the four waypoints and other nearby attractions. Since measuring distances requires walking back and forth between attractions with a stopwatch, minimizing the edges (while still maintaining an effective model) is ideal. Thus, our morning at Epcot was spent timing the walk from way point to attraction, attraction to attraction, and way point to way point; of course, we were obligated to take breaks to ride some of our favorite rides (because walking past Test Track and Soarin’ all day without being drawn in for a ride, we learned, is near impossible). We each ended up with travel times for all of our predetermined edges, so our next step is to calculate an average time for each edge from our collective data to incorporate into our model.

Biergarten

After our long day of data collecting, we had a few hours of free time in the park before our group dinner reservation at Biergarten, a Germany-themed buffet in Epcot. Not only was the food delicious, but the restaurant is decorated so that the patrons feel as though they’re dining in a German, nighttime, outdoor setting, which of course would not be complete without live music. We loved being able to catch up on each other’s afternoon activities over a good meal in a fun setting.

Biergarten

 IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth

Following our delicious German meal, we remained together as a group to watch the IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth firework show, which occurs each night at 9 p.m. over the Epcot World Showcase Lagoon. A breath-taking display of fireworks, lasers, giant torches, and a giant globe that displayed beautiful images of locations all around the world dazzled viewers. We are looking forward to an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of the show toward the end of our trip, but, for now, we simply enjoyed the magic!

IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth