Adelaide Honored at Book Premier

Arriving last Wednesday evening, back from a day at Sao Carlos working on the water system, we met Adelaide at the Centauro Mall in downtown Ribeirao Preto where she was to be one of the Distinguished Professores and other Scientistes who were honored by mention in a book whose release was to be announced that evening. Bob and I (but particularly myself) were not properly dressed for this auspicious occasion. I was able to stay in the background taking photos of the occasion; Bob was not so lucky, as his photo was taken and appeared a few days later in a local newspaper.

One of the more entertaining things (for me, since I still do not understand much Portuguese) was the playing of some good Brazilian music by a couple of college students. I got a picture of them playing their `violas´ (really, guitars, but smaller than standard and tuned to an alto or soprano pitch). These instruments were especially interesting because they have ten (10) strings; each set of two strings are tuned alike -- similar to a mandolin. The fact that there are five notes represented rather than four (as in a mandolin or a violin) or six (as in a classical guitar) is especially to be noted, as shown in the photograph I was able to capture with the cooperation of one of the players.

Later, in reading up on the history of the guitar, it seems that the name is derived from the Spanish, `quito´ (four) and `tar´, an ancient Persian word meaning stringed. Some of the guitar´s ancestory in fact includes four-stringed instruments! Derivations have included many more strings -- up to sixteen or so! A Physicist (who else?) did quite a research on the evolution of the guitar and finally did an optimization which resulted in the production of a quality of guitar superior to the finest made; so fine that Sergovia proclaimed all of the samples he tested to be better than all but the very best of others he had tried.