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Nature of Science
A Way of Seeing as It Happens
A mirror and a lens mounted on top project a live image of the outside view into a darkened room.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Bay Lexicon
Bay Lexicon is a visual dictionary made up of illustrated flash cards, exploring the landscape visible from the Bay Observatory’s windows as well as places and phenomena along the shoreline between Fort Point and Hunters Point.
Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
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
Big Chair, Little Chair
Each of the chairs in this series has dimensions that are twice that of the smaller chair. But doubling the dimension of a chair doesn’t double its strength.
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
Can You Spot the Human?
An array of embryo photos—can you guess which one is human? Then try it with photos of different eggs. And sperm.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Cheshire Cat
Make your partner's face disappear, leaving only a smile.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
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
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
Distorted Room
From one view, this room looks like a normal room, but people and things inside may seem quite strange.
Where: Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Energy from Death
A decaying carcass makes a perfect meal for an assortment of scavengers, including the dermestid beetles you can see in this exhibit. As they feast on these carcasses, the dermestid beetles and their larvae get their energy and nutrients from the dried flesh, skin, and other tissues.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Inverse Square Law
Light gets dimmer the farther it travels–and a bit of simple math explains how.
Lab Illustrations
Conklin spent several weeks observing the Exploratorium's life sciences laboratory and produced a number of original works that capture the inner workings of the facility. Beyond hand-rendered “portraits” of the many organisms cultured in the lab, Conklin successfully and beautifully captured the process and practices of staff biologists.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Live Chicken Embryos
It takes just 21 days for an egg to go from just laid to newly hatched chick, and a lot goes on in just the first week. Look closely and you’ll find blood vessels, a backbone, wing buds, eyes, a brain, and—throbbing prominently by day 5 or so—a beating heart.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Look Inside a Developing Fish
Here you can see inside living zebrafish embryos, see their blood circulate, and compare your own pulse to theirs.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Lumen-Illusion
Flashing lights create the illusion of motion.
Machine with Concrete
A motor is connected to a block of concrete via a simple system of gears. The final gear will make one revolution into the concrete once every 13.7 billion years, yet the machine whirs uninterrupted.
Where: Gallery 2: Tinkering
Observatory Library
The Observatory Library is the Bay Observatory’s research center, providing context and historical insight to the local landscape just beyond the windows.
Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
Recollections
This work addresses the poetics of motion, time and color. Participants are able to explore animated effects such as how sequences of images create movement. By displaying sequences simultaneously, movement forms are created. The history of the movement is expressed through multiple rainbow-colored images that evoke memories of legendary photographer Harold Edgerton's work.
Seismograph
This seismograph is an earthquake detector that records the up-and-down motion of the ground—whether made by tectonic activity or by you.
Shadow Box
A bright flash of light illuminates a phosphorescent wall—imprinting temporary shadows that capture a moment in time.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
Sweeper's Clock
Sweeper's Clock is a 12-hour-long movie in which two performers replicate an analog clock by sweeping two piles of garbage.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Time Shift
A visual work that allows viewers to browse and select from an archive of time-lapse sequences that reveal human and natural processes at work in the local landscape.
Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
Time to Think
At this exhibit, you can test your reaction time in three different scenarios—each requiring an increasing amount of thought. In the process, you can actually measure the time it takes your brain to accomplish the extra work of making a (fast) decision.
Timepieces (Solar System)
Timepieces provokes us to reconsider everyday timekeeping by presenting the time on other celestial bodies. These nine clocks show the current time on other planets and our moon.
Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
Tinkerer's Clock
Just outside the Tinkering Studio stands a twenty-two-foot-high clock. Small cartoon characters are poised to oil, brush, weld, or otherwise tinker with the numerals; knobs let visitors animate the characters so they can attend to their tasks. On the hour, the work is finished. The numbers swing out to form a clock face and a mellow Chinese gong rings.
Where: Gallery 2: Tinkering
Too Slow to Notice
A cup of water sitting on a table appears to just sit there. But second by second it’s losing billions of water molecules to the air through a process called evaporation.
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
What's Hot, What's Not?
At this exhibit, an infrared camera detects the heat radiating from warm objects and projects it on a big screen, allowing you to see what’s hot (and not) about you and the other people and objects in your surroundings.
Where: Crossroads: Getting Started
