Masks and vaccinations are recommended. Plan your visit
Visitor Guide: Young Kids
The Exploratorium continues to create the world’s best interactive exhibits for young children and their families, exhibits that encourage continued exploration, social interaction, and whimsical play. This curated collection of exhibits allows parents and children to co-investigate the world around them.
Aurora
A reflector stretches light from colored tiles into long bright ribbons.
Balancing Ball
Levitating on an invisible stream of air, a beach ball seems to defy gravity. If you try to pull the ball out, you can feel a force pulling it back in—the same force that keeps an airplane in flight.
Bike Rope Squirter
These upside down, bike-powered machines are built to throw ropes twenty feet into the air. Acting a bit like water and a bit like rope, the loops dance along the ground as visitors play an Exploratorium-style game of jump rope.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Black Sand
At this simple but ever-popular exhibit, black sand from nearby beaches make spiky patterns that reveal the invisible magnetic field between the poles of two giant magnets.
Colored Shadows
Step in front of this wall, and you’ll make shadows of various colors—yellow, magenta, cyan, red, green, blue, and yes, even black—that wiggle, jump, and dance along with you.
Echo Tube
Make a sound into the echo tube and listen for it to reflect back from the far end. You’ll hear a half-second delay, and strange distortions created by the journey.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Giant Mirror
This giant mirror was originally part of a flight simulator. Its size and near-perfect smoothness makes for astonishing optical (and acoustic) effects.
Hoop Nightmares
Your brain adapts quickly to a warped view of the world, turning baskets into air balls.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Icy Bodies
Like comets, these chunks of dry ice slowly disintegrate as they move, leaving a visible trail of condensed water vapor.
Pages
