Explore, Play, Discover: Websites, Activities, and More

Introduce students to unique life science activities that let them work with our research-quality microscopic images and videos.

For most of us, science arrives in our lives packaged neatly as fact. But how did it get that way?

Try your hand at explaining symbols both modern and ancient, and then make your own.

Visit the Outdoor Exploratorium at Fort Mason to explore the science behind wind, waves, and more.

Your worn shoe soles reveal whether your feet roll excessively from side to side as you walk.

Learn about origami, make your own paper, and find out the best way to fold a paper airplane.

Stand outside on a sunny day with a watch in your hand, and you can tell which way is north.

Download a PDF file with step-by-step instructions for doing your own cow's eye dissection.

Discover the secret colors hidden in black ink. With a paper towel, a black marker, and a cup of water, create a rainbow of colors while exploring capillary action and chromatography.

Learn how living things get energy from dead ones in this interactive exhibit.

Ever notice how noisy people are?

Activities and History

Learn about the giants of the polar seas.

Learn how sparkling wine is made, what makes it different from still wine, and where all those little bubbles come from!

What's in that cup of coffee anyway? Find out about the history and chemistry of coffee.

Map sunspots and build an apparatus for safe sunspot viewing!

Touch supercooled water drops with an ice crystal and trigger them to freeze instantly.

Play with the stuff that makes dough stretchy.

Four downloadable workshop guides for teaching introductory genetics in a museum or other informal education setting.

Make a photographic image without a camera!

Playing games is a great way to exercise your brain. Even a simple game like Tic-Tac-Toe can teach you about strategy.

Meet David Goodsell, a molecular biologist and artist who finds beauty in the molecules of cells.

Three auditory illusions created by students from the Center for Electronic Art.

You can make sentences without words!

The 1906 earthquake jolted geologists into focusing on how and why faults break loose.

Vsit a quirky kitchen where you can compose music with ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) objects.

A rock-climbing physicist explores the mechanics of his hands.

Scratch Film, also known as Direct Animation, is the process of drawing and scratching designs directly onto film.

Tour the Breads of the World

Get a behind-the-scenes look at activities and ideas we’re exploring.

Use dominoes to model a nerve cell's transmission of a signal

Make your own refracting telescope from a pair of reading glasses.

Can you take a sip of water from a cup with your eyes closed?

Explore the places, people, tools, and ideas behind the origins of matter, the universe, and life itself.

Think you have a lot in common with a kiwi fruit? Genetically speaking, you do.

A model for heart development

If you want to dig a ditch in the Arctic, you'd better bring more than a shovel.

How do scientists establish the age of artifacts, rocks, and settlements?

What do you really know about what you see?

Discover the secret colors hidden in black ink. With a paper towel, a black marker, and a cup of water, create a rainbow of colors while exploring capillary action and chromatography.

Make an observatory to see the amazing colors in bubbles!