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

When you ride a bike in a straight line, you must make many minor corrections in order to stay upright.

An introduction to the concepts and theories that contribute to contemporary complexity research.

Explore the surprising side of sound

Find out why biodiversity benefits plants and people alike.

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.

Learn about common techniques for peering inside the body in order to diagnose disease and injury.

Want to understand how to predict when the good waves are coming to your shore? It helps to start with the basics behind the formation of ocean waves.

Follow our crew as they visit the Dry Valleys and hike the slopes of volcanic Mt. Erebus.

The Instruments Aboard the Mars Exploration Rover

How do you stop and steer a bicycle? What forces keep the bicycle from falling over?

Learn how changes in genes over generations created the modern goldfish.

One man's journey into blindness

Rube Goldberg-inspired cause and effect contraptions using everyday materials and found objects.

This is an easy grafting project for beginners.

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

Explore the science behind food and cooking with recipes, activities, and archived Webcasts.

What is a gear ratio? And how do gears help make the bicycle so efficient?

Explore the scientific, historical, and cultural context behind a new opera about the first atomic bomb test.

Will the "real" South Pole please stand up?

The Antarctic food web is the simplest on the planet, and krill are at its hub.

Design and build a musical instrument that responds to changing light.

Find out how a cochlear implant helped one man regain the ability to listen.

Build a stripped-down motor, a simple, easy-to-make version of the electric motors found in toys, tools, and appliances.

What can you build with 50 straws and 50 pins?

Use your naked egg to experiment with osmosis, the movement of water across a membrane.

Enjoy the early memories of some of the visitors to this website.

Measure your reaction time with just a meter stick and some help from a friend.

Are there meat by-products in makeup? Can you guess where you might find them?

Discover secret colors hidden in a black marker!

See a map of recent earthquakes in the United States, and learn why earthquakes happen so frequently on the West Coast.

See a map of recent earthquakes in the United States, and learn why earthquakes happen so frequently on the West Coast.

Learn how to find the histories and origins of words.

Leonardo's famous painting is used in an interesting perceptual experiment.

Can you trust your own memory? Find out with this activity.

Take a microscopic tour of the staff of life.

Listen to internationally recognized authorities on human thought and behavior, including Temple Grandin and Paul Ekman.

An introduction to the concepts and theories that contribute to contemporary complexity research.

Can your eyes fool your nose? Find out with this experiment.

Sit down for compost tea with a visionary cultivator.

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

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

Explore mechanical elements such as cams, levers, and linkages to create your own moving sculpture.

Map sunspots and build an apparatus for safe sunspot viewing!

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

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

We can't predict when an earthquake will occur, but we can avoid some potential disasters.