Leonardo da vinci adventure

The Da Vinci Code (By Dan Brown) is one of my favorite books, and being able to learn more about Leonardo, and see his works inches away from my face was AWESOME! In 1452, during the Renaissance, a genius was born with the name Leonardo Da Vinci. When he was young, his uncles arranged for him to apprenticeship in the trade of architecture, sculpture, and art. He fascinated with the things around him, and felt the desire to understand the way this world works. It was his habit to always carry around folded pieces of scrap paper, where he could record things he observed, or theories that he formed. Those fragile pieces of 500 year old paper in Leonardo’s own hand, were what we saw, right in front of us! Fun fact: whenever he tried to show motion, he would also repeat and thicken the lines. His notes were tiny and neat, with little drawings on the side. Leonardo not only left incredible paintings for artists, but a legacy for scientist and engineers.

Absolutely amazing in the fact that he could do it all- observe well, write descriptively, draw lifely, and think ingenuisly. He wanted to study the mountains that were around him, and theorized that they formed because of an cave scalpel somewhere, like a see-saw: if something comes up, something else has to come down. Looking at the moon, he saw bumps, and waves, which he was only seen with by the ocean, and believed that the moon had a lot of water on it. Sure, we know today that it wasn’t correct, but just that scientific thinking and hypothesizing is something that we can learn from! Not to mention, he discovered what we today call “earth shine”, which is being able to see not only the shining crescent, but also the dark disk of the moon. Already, he made analogies with water and air currents to how the world is a system, and his genius mind had connected that sound with waves- today’s sound waves! Through observing, Leonardo discovered that water droplets, upon landing on the ground makes a crown shape. Five hundred years back, was he already spot on with something that we need super advance photography technology to spot- that’s mind blowing! He was not only a scientist, artist, but moreover an engineer, who tried to develop a solution for the flooding river. Leonardo’s solution is something that we use today-a dam. He was so great, that the famous painter Raphael, like many people today, deeply admired him, and even painted Leonardo as Pluto on one of his morals!
​
Killer eyesight, observation, and drawing skills, helped him see the world in a different way than majority of the people. He believed that you needed to understand what you observed. We shouldn’t be afraid to be curious and hypothesis. As the wise Leonardo said, “it’s not enough to believe what you see. You must also understand what you see.” One of the biggest things I took away from this experience was what Leonard Da Vinci showed us-to take life slowly, and notice the things around us. Sometimes we’re so focused on sprinting to our destination, that we miss the beautiful scenery along the way. Sometimes we’re too busy looking into the future that we forget the enjoy the present. With the technology today, everything is moving and advancing so quickly, and sometimes we just need to slow down to be able to fully appreciate the beautiful world around us.