exploratorium

Blog: Pearl Tesler

Science writer Pearl Tesler has worked at the Exploratorium since 1996, creating museum exhibits, multimedia web sites, activities, experiments, apps, articles, and books, including The Math Explorer and The Brain Explorer. A physicist with a focus in optics, she earned...

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House of cardboard
Corrugation Nation

by Pearl Tesler • June 28, 2017

What does cardboard have in common with bicycles, kites, the Eiffel tower, and the Golden Gate Bridge? Triangles.

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Can You Believe It? Seven Questions to Ask About Any Scientific Claim

by Pearl Tesler • December 15, 2016

Staying informed is increasingly tricky business. Can you believe every story you hear or read? Here are some tips to help bring some healthy skepticism to your daily news feed.

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Round the Clock(s)

by Pearl Tesler • September 7, 2016

“What time is it?” Ask this simple question and you’ll get a deliriously un-simple set of answers, courtesy of Timepieces, a new artwork by Katie Paterson on display at the Exploratorium.

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Egg-Quinox Challenge

by Pearl Tesler • September 25, 2015

An oft-told tale holds that you can balance an egg on its end during the equinox. Let's crack open the real story.

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Old Dog, New Pics: Pluto Flyby

by Pearl Tesler • July 14, 2015

The New Horizons probe has zipped by Pluto and done what all good fast-moving tourists do--take pics.

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Who’s Driving?
Who’s Driving?

by Pearl Tesler • March 18, 2015

If you live anywhere near Silicon Valley, then you may already have glimpsed the eerie sight of a driverless car flying down the freeway. My initial reaction to these rolling Google ghost ships, shared by many, was to be afraid—very afraid.

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Eyesight to the Blind
Eyesight to the Blind

by Pearl Tesler • March 11, 2015

Age, genetics, or sheer bad luck can land you among the 285 million people worldwide who are visually impaired. Among older adults in the Western world, the leading cause of blindness is degeneration of the photoreceptors in the eye—as in macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

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Thought Crimes
Thought Crimes

by Pearl Tesler • March 3, 2015

Imagine this: You get scooped up by police, fitted with electronic headgear, and shown a series of random pictures. Among the random pictures is a not-so-random one: A crime scene. A tiny electric twinge on your scalp tips off police; the crime scene is familiar to you. You are under arrest.

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2014: The Year in (Unsung) Science
2014: The Year in (Unsung) Science

by Pearl Tesler • January 6, 2015

If there’s any theme to the big science stories this year, it might be this—science giveth, and science taketh away.

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Talkin’ Turkey
Talkin’ Turkey

by Pearl Tesler • November 19, 2014

If you find yourself snoring on the sofa after a Thanksgiving feast, don’t blame the bird. It’s an oft-cited factoid this time of year—an old canard, if you will: A heavy dose of an amino acid called tryptophan in turkey, they say, brings on the traditional after-dinner nap attack. But let’s nip this one in the bird: It’s all jive, turkey.

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