Learn with us online while the Exploratorium is temporarily closed. You can help us reopen—donate today.
Chemistry
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
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.
Geysers
The timing of the eruptions of these geysers depends on water temperature and pressure.
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.
Liquid Litmus
See the chemical reactions taking place in an electrolytic cell, as electricity flowing through a tank of salt water and pH-indicating dye creates zones of acidic (yellow) and basic (blue) solutions.
Rust Wedge
Rust is a major issue in waterfront buildings, as water enters cracks in masonry structures and rusts the underlying steel reinforcement. This exhibit shows the expansive force of rusting steel. A piece of iron placed in the cleft of a block of concrete is beginning to rust—it will expand over time and eventually fracture the block.
Where: Koret Foundation Bay Walk
Skillets
Skillets heat up differently: test their mettle.
Water-Drop Photography
Here you can select and photograph a precise moment—to within a millisecond—as a water droplet falls into a small pool of water. Freezing the action reveals both the complexity and the beauty of fluid motion.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
