exploratorium

Exhibits

SUBJECTS

Energy

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
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
Downhill Race

Believe it or not, when objects roll downhill, it’s not their weight or size that determines their speed—it’s how their weight is distributed.

Where:   Crossroads: Getting Started
Fluorescent Tube

Powder inside a fluorescent tube makes invisible light visible.

Where:   Bechtel Gallery 3: Seeing & Listening
Pedal Generator

Power these appliances with your feet!

Where:   Gallery 2: Tinkering
Sand Graph

Sand traces a pendulum‘s motion.

Where:   Crossroads: Getting Started
Skillets

Skillets heat up differently: test their mettle.

Where:   Bechtel Gallery 3, Wattis Webcast Studio
Strange Attractor

Magnets in the pendulum and the disks  transfer energy back and forth, making the pendulum swing in unpredictable ways.

Where:   Crossroads: Getting Started