Publications

Since the early days of the Exploratorium, we’ve reached out to people who are unable to visit the museum—or who want to revisit it—in a variety of ways. Among the many ways we do this is by offering engaging, informative publications. Below are some of our most recent books.

The Art of Tinkering

The Art of Tinkering is a celebration of a whole new way to learn by thinking with your hands, working with readily available materials, getting your hands dirty, and, yes, sometimes failing and bouncing back from getting stuck. The Art of Tinkering offers a fascinating portrait of today’s maker scene, as well as beginner activities for you to try on your own. Make circuits out of playdough, film a time-lapse movie, fuse plastics into beautiful fabric, and much, much more.

Exploralab: 150 Ways to Investigate the Amazing Science All Around You

Exploralab is a book that takes curious kid scientists, ages 8–12, through 24 hours’ worth of household investigations, experiments, and discoveries.

Seeing: 30 Hands-On Visual Discoveries

Viendo: 30 descubrimientos visuales interactivos

Seeing is a book of hands-on and eyes-on activities based on popular Exploratorium exhibits. Great for keeping little minds busy during long road trips, and older minds happy with brain and vision challenges!

The Art of Curiosity

Fifty of the world's most creative people share their stories, their inspirations, and their unique takes on science and education, all inspired by the Exploratorium. Join them in a wonderfully playful, insightful, and sometimes incredibly moving journey to see how you, too, can harness your powers of observation, inquiry, and engagement to be the change you want to see in the worldregardless of who you are or what you do.

Exploring Kitchen Science: 30+ Edible Experiments and Kitchen Activities

Exploring Kitchen Science is your hands-on guide to exploring all the tasty chemistry that goes on all around you. From burning a peanut to understand how calories work to making blinking rock candies with LEDs inside, from cooking up oobleck as a wild and wacky lesson in a matter of making ice cream with dry ice!

Exploring the Science of Light: 35 Illuminating Experiments and Colorful Projects for Kids

Have you ever looked at the sky and wondered why it's blue? Or watched shadows shrink and grow over the course of a day? If so, this collection of awesome activities on the physics of light is for you. Light is everywhere and does so many things—it makes the world we live in more colorful, helps grow the food we eat and lets us see what goes on around us. Explore the visible spectrum with activities like DIT Rainbows, Colored Shadows, Pinhole Camera, Lightpainting, and more.

Inquisitive Cook: Discover How a Pinch of Curiosity Can Improve Your Cooking

In a light, anecdotal, highly informative style, expert cooking writers Anne Gardiner and Sue Wilson—with the help of Exploratorium staff—reveal the unexpected and practical science of the kitchen.

Watching Weather: Discover the Unexpected Science and Lore of Sun, Storms and Seasons

Watching Weather explains the basic scientific principles that underlie the vagaries of the weather. By combining knowledge of these principles, rules of thumb provided by this book, and observations of the sky and clouds and wind, you can begin to predict your local weather.

The Exploratorium Science Snackbook: Cook Up Over 100 Hands-On Science Exhibits from Everyday Materials

The Exploratorium Science Snackbook is a hands-on guide to creating junior versions of over 100 of the museum's amazing exhibits. Want to construct an anti-gravity mirror of your own? Curious about creating electrical "fleas"? A desire to duck into a kaleidoscope? Then the Snackbook is for you. Explore the mysteries of energy and matter, light, and color, force, and motion, vision and perception, sound, and hearing in this engaging activity book.

Exploratorium Cookbook I: A Construction Manual for Exploratorium Exhibits

The Exploratorium Cookbook instead delivers everything you need to build your own versions of the interactive exhibits found on our museum floor. Volume I contains 82 exhibits "recipes" related to light and images, vision, sound and hearing, electricity, and magnetism, color, mechanics, and patterns; each includes a description and detailed construction guidelines.

Exploratorium Cookbook II: A Construction Manual for Exploratorium Exhibits

The Exploratorium Cookbook delivers everything you need to cook up your own versions of the interactive exhibits found on our museum floor. Volume II contains 52 exhibits “recipes” related to mechanics, electricity and magnetism, visual perception, color and light, animal and plant behavior, the physics of sound, patterns, neurophysiology, and heat and temperature; each includes a description and detailed construction guidelines.

Exploratorium Cookbook III: A Construction Manual for Exploratorium Exhibits

The Exploratorium Cookbook delivers everything you need to cook up your own versions of the interactive exhibits found on our museum floor. Volume III contains 69 exhibits "recipes" related to mechanics, electricity, and magnetism, visual and aural perception, color and light, animal and plant behavior, the physics of sound, patterns, neurophysiology, math, and heat and temperature; each includes a description and detailed construction guidelines.