Masks and vaccinations are recommended. Plan your visit
Light, Color & Seeing
Adapting to Color
Change your perception of color by flooding your eyes with colored light.
All Eyes on Me
Situate yourself at just the right place in space in front of this parabolic mirror array and you’ll see dozens of your own eyeballs peering back at you.
Ames Chairs
What we see can depend on what we expect to see.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Animation Tower
Quick-changing views create the illusion of motion.
Aurora
A reflector stretches light from colored tiles into long bright ribbons.
Bird in a Cage
Stare at a bird’s eye for 30 seconds, then look into the empty cage. You’ll see a ghostly bird—of a very different color—inside the cage
Blood Cells in Your Eye
Gaze into the eyepiece at the blue light, looking for bright specks moving in short bursts against the background, and feeling your pulse as you watch them.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Bright Black
At this exhibit, find out how subjective brightness can be as you struggle—and fail—to correctly decide whether the squares you see are black or white.
Café Wall Illusion
These tiles aren't really crooked–they just look that way.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Change Blindness
Something changes each time this picture blinks . . . but you probably won't see it.
Cheshire Cat
Make your partner's face disappear, leaving only a smile.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Color Conflicts
When can reading get in the way of speaking?
Colored Circles
Overlapping pools of red, blue, and green create a Venn diagram of additive color.
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.
Corner Reflector
This reflector has you cornered: It always sends light back in the direction from which it came.
Countless Colors
How many colors can you make by mixing red, green, and blue light?
Disagreeing About Color
Which of the outer dots best matches the center dot? Ask a few people and chances are you’ll get a few different answers.
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
Disappearing Rings
Lower these rings into the Bay and see just how far you can see into the water. One of the San Francisco Bay’s defining features, sediment flows from the delta change with the seasons. This exhibit is based on a scientific observational instrument called a “secchi disk,” which scientists use to determine water clarity.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Drip Chamber
Liquid glycerin drips down, creating unique shapes and shadow patterns.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Everyone Is You and Me
By adjusting the light levels on either side of this half-silvered glass, you and a friend can merge your faces into a single composite face.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Floater Theater
Floater Theater is an intimate theatrical environment that whimsically prompts participants to explore the fascinating, commonly experienced phenomenon of eye floaters.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Flourish (Bloom)
This 3-D sculpture is animated when spun under a strobe light. The bloom’s animation effect is achieved by progressive rotations of the golden ratio, phi (ϕ), the same ratio that nature employs to generate the spiral patterns we see in pinecones and sunflowers.
Gray Step
With the rope hanging down, the left and right sides of the board appear identical. Lifting the rope shows the dramatic difference that your eyes missed—and continue to miss, as soon as you let the rope fall again.
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.
Image Relay
Lenses transmit an image of your face across space.
Jacques Cousteau in Seashells
There’s more to seeing than meets the eye.
Where: Ray and Dagmar Dolby Atrium
Magic Wand
Wave the wand quickly and see an image appear.
Mirrorly a Window
Confusing sensory information can be profoundly disturbing.
Monochromatic Room
Things look oddly colorless in this room because they’re lit by light of only one color—a sodium vapor lamp of the type often used for streetlights.
Mood Lighting
Sit down in a cozy chair and bathe your brain in a bubble of color of your choosing, dialing up anything from amber to violet. As you spend a few moments with each color, you may feel a shift in your own emotional hue.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Perspective Drawing Window
Tracing on the glass produces precise perspective.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Pixel Table
Create myriad colored shadows with mirrored tubes.
Robot Dance
Quick-changing views create the illusion of motion.
Rotating Shadow House
A rotating structure made of laths casts shadows that slowly change, calling to mind the shifting light of a day or a season and producing unexpected variations. Benches allow for relaxation and quiet watching.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Silage Beach
Are the stripes spinning . . . or are you?
Soap Film Painting
Soap film hits the big time at this exhibit, featuring a giant square soap bubble the size of a picture window. The cascading colors you see here arise from overlapping light waves that reflect from the front and back surfaces of the soap film—a phenomenon called interference.
Sophisticated Shadows
If you think shadows are a straightforward business, prepare for a surprise—actually, a whole bunch of surprises. Combining various light sources in various ways, you’ll quickly discover that there’s nothing simple about a simple shadow.
Sun Painting
Created by artist Bob Miller, this classic Exploratorium exhibit is a “live” painting that uses light from the Sun as its palette.
Triple-Aye Lightstick
A sweeping glance creates images that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. This phenomenon, called persistence of vision, is also at work in videos and movie projections, which also flash on and off rapidly.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Watch Water Freeze
Ordinarily, water freezes too slowly to be appreciated. Here, polarized light and an ultra cold slab let you watch water crystalize rapidly in real time. The colorful mosaic of ice that forms is different every time.
Your Father’s Nose
How does it feel to mix your face with someone else’s?
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
