Chemistry

A Drop to Drink

Getting a drink of water would be very different if you were the size of a doll.

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: Bechtel Gallery 3: Seeing & Listening

Geysers

The timing of the eruptions of these geysers depends on water temperature and pressure.

Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems

Icy Bodies

Like comets, these chunks of dry ice slowly disintegrate as they move, leaving a visible trail of condensed water vapor.

Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6, Mezzanine

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.

Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6, Mezzanine

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

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