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Virus Science
Make sense of timely topics and find general science support for your virtual classroom or learning together at home.
Viruses and Us
Explore the science of viruses and how they impact us.
What Are Viruses?
Viruses cannot replicate on their own and instead use the cells of infected hosts to copy themselves. The Viral Packaging Science Snack uses paper, yarn, and cotton balls to show that viruses are simply bundles of protein and nucleic acid, not living organisms.
How Does Soap Inactivate Coronaviruses?
Coronaviruses are surrounded by the same type of membrane that surrounds human cells. Learn how disrupting this membrane with soap or alcohol inactivates the virus.
How Do Virus Membranes Behave?
The Cellular Soap Opera Science Snack uses a soap film to model how viral and cellular membranes behave. Explore the best way to disrupt it with your own hands.
How Big Is a Virus?
Use the Exploratorium exhibit Cells to Scale to visualize how small a coronavirus really is and investigate the implications of its small size.
How Do Viruses Compare with Other Small Things?
The novel coronavirus is around 120 nanometers, which is smaller than the bacteria on our bodies and 100 times smaller than our cells. The Life Size Science Snack helps you explore the size and scale of the microbial world, including how viruses compare to the mesh on a professional face mask.
How Long Does Coronavirus Last On Surfaces?
Scientists describe how long the coronavirus can last on different surfaces by its half-life, or the length of time it takes for half of the viruses to be inactivated. The Radioactive Decay Model Science Snack uses pennies to model exponential decay, which applies to radioactivity as well as viruses.
How Do Viruses Reproduce?
Viruses hijack the cells of the organisms they infect to make more viruses. The Breakfast Proteins Science Snack models how cells make proteins from a genetic source code. Viruses bring their own genetic code, and use this cellular machinery to make viral proteins, which self-assemble to make more viruses.
How Do We Test for Viral Infection?
Viruses can't be seen with a light microscope (see How Big is a Virus?). Currently, the primary way to confirm that someone is infected with coronavirus is to test their cells for viral gene sequences. The Secret Codon Science Snack shows how any message can be written with the four letters that make up the gene sequences that are the code of life. Tests to detect antibodies to the coronavirus in people’s blood are also in active development. The presence of coronavirus antibodies would indicate that someone has been infected in the past, even if they’ve recovered.
How Do You Protect Yourself From Infection?
Your body has multiple interacting systems to guard against infections by viruses and bacteria. You might not think of your skin and mucous membranes as part of your immune system, but they’re the first parts of your body that can keep pathogens out. The Skin Shield Snack lets you experiment with fruit to see what might happen when pathogens get past this line of defense.
What Does a Vaccine Do?
The novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has not previously been introduced to the human population, so no one in the world has prior immunity to it. The Antibody Attack Science Snack models how your body develops immunity to foreign invaders by producing antibodies that attack them. The goal of a vaccine is to have people create these antibodies without ever being infected.
How Do We Fight Viruses?
Your body is able to detect foreign invaders and fight them. Watch Exploratorium educator Tory Brady take you through the cast of characters that make up Our Amazing Immune System.
Covid Conversations
Watch recent conversations with leading researchers who are working to stop the coronavirus pandemic. Topics include vaccines, testing, and the other research that will help us return to “normal.”
Personal and Social Behavior
Explore the science behind how we interact with each other.
What type of mask should I wear?
We modified the Exploratorium's Giant Mirror exhibit to allow us to observe small changes in the temperature of moving air. In this video, we use those observations to determine which face coverings work best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
Can You Believe It?
You are probably confronted with scientific facts and factoids from a multitude of sources. How do you know what you can trust? This article explains seven questions you should ask about any scientific claim.
How Can You Stop Touching Your Face?
You touch your face, probably without realizing it, more than a dozen times an hour. Trying to stop is not usually effective; how do you stop yourself from doing something you don't know you're doing? This activity presents a simple technique that allows you to catch yourself in the act every time you bring your hand near your face.
How Do You Greet People Safely?
As humans, it’s important to connect—but in this time of social distancing, we don’t want to share too much. In this blog post from Exploratorium exhibit developer Paul Dancstep, investigate (and try out!) a range of greetings and find out which are the most (and least) infectious. What actions can we take to feel close, even when we must keep our distance?
Can a Virus Turn Us Against Each Other?
Times of crisis can bring people together—but they can also promote xenophobia, or the fear of people different from us. In this blog post, find out what contributes to xenophobia, how it affects us, and how we can keep it in check.
How Well Do You Wash?
Human skin is covered with bacteria, as you'll discover by doing the Salty Pits Science Snack. You can also use bacterial cultures to see how well you wash your hands. Pour some agar plates as described in the Snack, and place your thumbprint on one side. Wash your hands, and put your thumbprint on the other side. Is there a difference in the amount of bacteria that grows?
How Strong Is Your Grip?
A firm handshake can transfer twice the number of microbes as a gentle one due to the increase in contact surface area. The Hand Battery Science Snack provides a way to measure the difference that pressing harder makes, since more contact surface area also results in a larger current in the battery.
How Hot Are You?
Some airports use thermal scanners to screen arriving passengers for fever. These cameras are like the one in the Exploratorium exhibit What’s Hot, What’s Not?—they detect infrared light, which indicates the amount of heat radiating from the surface of an object. Thermal scanners can't identify someone who is infected with coronavirus but doesn't yet have a fever or other symptoms.
How Can You Help Keep Your Community Healthy?
The current coronavirus outbreak requires everyone to help keep the community safe through frequent handwashing, staying at home, and maintaining social distance. Is the collective benefit worth the inconvenience? Explore this calculation by playing The Investment Game and changing the cards from values of money to types of individual health precautions ($0 would be “no precautions taken”)—a higher value in the collective pot at the end of the round means higher likelihood that everyone will stay healthy. What do you notice about individual decisions and collective outcomes?
How Do We Coordinate Communication Between Critical Stakeholders?
Communication between the government, medical professionals, and our communities helps us figure out how to reduce the spread of the virus and have the best outcome. Play one round of the Collaborative Shapes activity as described, then modify by adding an additional player who can keep their eyes open and talk to the other players, but who cannot touch them or the rope. What changes when there’s a player who can see, but relies on others to act?
What Other Things Are Contagious?
Many of the things we “catch” from one another are due to microbes. Are there other ways we influence the biology of our neighbors? Watch this video to see if you catch a physiological response.
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