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Crossroads: Getting Started
Awaken your curiosity with open-ended exploration.
Easy-to-engage perception, time, and motion exhibits allow for open-ended exploration and introduce visitors to phenomena that can be explored throughout the museum.
A Drop to Drink
Getting a drink of water would be very different if you were the size of a doll.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
A Sip of Conflict
Would you, could you, will you drink from a water fountain fashioned from an actual—but unused—toilet? Porcelain is just porcelain . . . right?
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Benham's Disk
When the disk is spun, the colors you see are illusions. This effect was popularized in 1894 by toymaker C. E. Benham, who called his spinning disk an “artificial spectrum top."
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Café Wall Illusion
These tiles aren't really crooked–they just look that way.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Cloud Chamber
Look down into the chamber and you’ll see an ongoing cascade of thin white trails appearing and disappearing. These are cosmic ray tracks, created by high-energy subatomic particles from space.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Color Your Judgment
Your expectations may change your experience.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Coupled Pendulums
Start one of these two pendulums swinging and soon you’ll see the other pendulum start swinging, too. Keep watching and you’ll see the two pendulums take turns, alternately swinging energetically and coming to a near standstill.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Disappearing Act
An animal that blends in with its environment is much easier to see when it's moving than when it's still.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Disappearing Glass Rods
When light passes from one clear medium into another, it (usually) bends—a phenomenon called refraction. Distortions caused by refraction are part of why you can see objects that are clear.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
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