MOTnews 60 (26/05/2005)

ONE THOUSAND PHOTOS ON THE WEB!

The MOT has just posted the one-thousandth photo of a museum object on its website! The Museum has for a long time had an extensive on-line photo page in which all sorts of subjects are featured: attractive images of our buildings, a whole series of special activities at the MOT, etc. Apart from that, we also find it very important to present our collection on-line. In this way, you can discover a great many exciting, familiar and sometimes not-so-familiar tools on the MOT website. And so as of now, we have reached the number of one thousand on-line pictures of tools. Quite an achievement, especially when you consider that each picture is also captioned by the official name of the tool and that each one has also been linked to the ID-DOC database, in which you can find a great deal more information about each tool and the use it was put to. Though we say it ourselves, we think that this deserves a round of applause, and above all a special hand for our hardworking photographer who has lovingly and patiently put every museum piece in the spotlight, as it were, in the most excellent manner possible. You can find the photos by pointing your browser to http://www.mot.be/english/index.htm and then clicking "Photos" in the menu on the left.

GRANDMOTHER'S RECIPES

Getting clean with plants, part 2

You probably remember the fun times you had in nursery school learning to build things from chestnuts and cocktail sticks and the like. Well, you can use chestnuts for a great deal more things besides.

To clean all sorts of things and also to get your skin clean, horse chestnuts were peeled, dried in the oven and then grated or ground.

Dissolving a little of this floury powder in water produces really effective soapsuds. Just be sure not to drink it!

SAY WHAT?

In this MOT-news item we try to explain proverbs and sayings that have their roots in our technical history. Similar proverbs are found in different languages, but each language has it's own typical sayings. Therefore we do not translate this item in English.

KIDS news: something to tell your children this evening

Now that the warm weather is on its way, you're probably looking forward more than ever to splashing around in a pool of nice cool water. But it is also important to be economical with your use of water. Where we live, everybody has enough water every day, not just for drinking, but also for showering, doing the dishes, cooking, flushing the toilet, and so on.

But this is not the case everywhere in the world. In many African countries, you have to walk for miles to get water and often that water is not even very clean.

However, people in a number of countries have come up with some very clever ways of getting extra water. In Chile for example, the people in the mountain village of Chungchungo were hardly able to get any water at all. It almost never rains there and the only couple of springs nearby do not produce enough water. But they found another source of water. The El Toto mountain nearby is often covered in mist and clouds, and a cloud consists of tiny water droplets. The villagers have now put up mist netting at the top of the mountain, with a rain gutter underneath. Droplets in the clouds hit the threads of the netting and form large droplets which fall into the rain gutter, which then leads to water storage basins. Thanks to this system, the villagers are no longer short of water.