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

The lure of Terra Australis Incognita begins with the Ancient Greeks and ends with modern cruise ships.

Build a bridge from a piece of paper and explore ways of making it stronger.

These tricky pictures shift and change as you look at them.

APE was a four-year Exploratorium project to explore strategies and tactics to shift the role of visitors from passive recipient of information to active participant in the exhibit experience.

Learn how to tie the six knots most useful on a voyaging canoe.

Land of ice and people

Find out what all that fiddling around before a concert is really about.

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

Grow spikes of crystals in the sun.

With just mud, paper and an egg, you can grow colonies of multi-hued microbes!

Why do road bikes have thin tires, while mountain bikes have fat tires?

The more astronomy changes, the more it stays the same. This series of images juxtaposes ancient and modern study of the celestial bodies.

Make a tool that lets you measure how tall a building is or how high a rocket flies.

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

A downloadable series of graphics from our Faultline website gives a snapshot of seismic science.

This stuff can't make up its mind -- is it a liquid or a solid?

See living stem cells and find out why they are the "stem" from which all other cells develop.

A collection of auditory illusions found in indigenous folk practices, popular music, and scientific research.

Make a photographic image without a camera!

Each webcast, the Exploratorium staff and teachers demonstrate their science projects and compete for the title of IRON SCIENCE TEACHER!

Read stories and see footage from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Watch old pennies turn bright and shiny right before your eyes!

Learn about the search for life elsewhere in the universe.

Launch a rocket with a plastic pop bottle and use Height Site to figure out how high it flies.

Cuatro exposiciones lo suficientemente pequeñas para caber en tarjetas postales.

A fish-eye view of the brain

You may be surprised at the results of this "wimpy" workout.

Take a virtual journey to the frog capital of the world, Rayne, Louisiana.

Explore Saturn, its rings and moons, and see the latest images.

Did you know the Maya used two calendars? How did they know when to plan their big New Year's parties?

You can make a light painting with a light source, a darkened room, and a digital camera.

How has imagery changed the way we look at our bodies—over time and in different cultures?

What can you build with 50 straws and 50 pins?

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

Build cantilevers from bamboo garden poles and drinking straws and discover the importance of scale.

Gather and compare real data about sunspots and solar x-ray activity.

The frozen worlds of the Arctic and Antarctica

Explore an interactive map.

Get a taste of how the earth's plates move.

Test your memory and compare it with your friends'.

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

Explore a timeline of homind fossils.

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

The more astronomy changes, the more it stays the same. This series of images juxtaposes ancient and modern study of the celestial bodies.

Art/science teams explore the underlying systems that give the San Francisco Bay Area its unique character.

Explore the surrounding sounds that everyday objects make. Build a noise contraption from these objects, then add a PicoCricket to automate your contraption. Finally, add a light sensor and program your sound automata to "play" when triggered by light.