The Exploratorium: 5 Family Favorites
February 17th, 2009 | by Jamie Pearson 12 comments
Much as it embarrasses me to admit it, I am easily overwhelmed by science museums. I am all optimism at first, but soon I get bogged down in boring exhibits about light refraction and the properties of sound. Le yawn.
I recently braved the Exploratorium in San Francisco with my family. Here are the five best exhibits there. If you’re science interest-challenged like me, you can see them all in an hour.
1. Floating Objects
I’m sure this is an extremely scientific exhibit, but it’s also just plain cool. You balance beach balls on columns of air. The balls either go flying high or hover low, depending on the angle of the air shooter thingie. If this is science, I’m in.
2. Listening Vessels
Enormous cement parabolic “ears” with seats inside. You perch on one, your friend perches on the other about 50 feet away, and you converse with them in a normal speaking voice. Just plain freaky.
3. Black Sand
It turns out black sand beaches are rich in iron ore (which is what makes them black). Sculpt, pour, and mold it on a magnetic sand table. Try not to think about how many other people have done the same, and whether they always wash their hands after using the restroom.
4. Shadow Box
A large, three-sided room with walls covered with phosphor-impregnated vinyl. Every 30 seconds, a strobe light flashes causing the walls to glow for approximately 15 seconds, except in those places where people block the light and create “shadows.” I copied that directly from their website. I sincerely hope those glowing walls don’t cause cancer, because I’ve been jumping around in that box since I was 8 years old.
5. Delayed Speech
It turns out it’s incredibly hard to speak intelligibly when the playback of your voice is delayed 1/5 of a second, but that didn’t stop my children from trying for at least twenty minutes.
At this point I wasn’t speaking too intelligibly myself, because science museum torpor had set in. So we grabbed some coffee and got out of there.
***
Need a family friendly place to stay in San Francisco? We like these:
The Argonaut Hotel
The Hotel Del Sol
The Columbus Motor Inn
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Rebecca on February 18th, 2009
Oh, thank God. I just braved the Liberty Science Center yesterday and felt deficient for not finding it more enthralling. So happy to hear I’m not alone (and my kids, whom I subjected to 4 HOURS of forced museum exploration, will be so jealous that yours got out of there in an hour…).
Amber's Crazy Bloggin' Canuck on February 18th, 2009
This brings me such comfort. I don’t think I have even been to a science museum but know I will be dragged there when my kids get older. Glad I won’t be alone in my inadequacies. :-)
Carolina on February 18th, 2009
How you got out of the Exploratorium in under an hour is baffling, you are the child whisperer apparently.
So being a science museum groupie, I love this museum. Good picks.
Steven Roll on February 18th, 2009
Another challenge is if you have kids of different ages. My daughter is five years older than my son. It’s hard to find things they will both be interested in.
One science museum where this wasn’t such a problem was The Franklin in Philadelphia. Besides a planetarium, Imax movies, and live baby alligator petting, you could bicycle across the atrium on a tightwire that was about 50 feet up.
Seana on February 18th, 2009
That last one explains why I am dumbfounded everytime I try to talk to my husband using his hands free device in the car and there is a slight delay before I hear my voice repeated. It takes supreme concentration to ignore it! I learn something new every time I take my kids to this museum, and although the sheer humanity is overwhelming and the prices in the cafe are absurd, my kids love it and thus I will return, again and again.
Sharlene on February 18th, 2009
I love the Exploratorium! What about the green screen that captures your shadow in whatever idiotic pose you choose? Brilliance!
Lorraine on February 18th, 2009
Great timing! We were just thinking about going up there, so this is a good motivator to do so! I’ll print out your post as a reference.
wandermom on February 18th, 2009
Jamie you crack me up. I swear I’ve cumulatively spent years of my life in Science Museums – for hours at a time. I seriously don’t remember ever being bored. Maybe I’m just weird.
Jennifer Margulis on February 19th, 2009
My favorite science museum ever is the one in Boston. My least favorite — too many exhibits, too many strobe lights (so, I paid more than $20 to be at … the mall?) — is the one in Montreal. The OMNI here in Oregon (in Portland) is pretty awesome and for a more science-y, less sensory explosion museum there’s ScienceWorks in Ashland, where we live.
I so want to take the kids to the Exploratorium. We’ve tried to go twice recently. Guess what? It was Monday and they were closed…
Amy Canby on February 25th, 2009
We recently took guests to the science museum here in Denver. After losing Mac in the mineral display (our first stop) I felt obligated to carry on to the new exhibit on weather. After a long line we finally wove our way through, trying to keep track of the 5 kids aged 3-12, trying to decide what to read, what hands-on displays to wait our turn for, whether to sit in the tornado display with the big fan blaring overhead. Stress! Science baffles me. Stupidly, when we decided Ben wasn’t getting enough at school, I decided I’d engage him in weekly science experiment at home. After hours of online research yesterday we tackled our first salt water experiments only to find out that he already knew how the experiments would turn out and more about “why” than I did. Now I’m looking for an after school science club!
Jamie Pearson on February 25th, 2009
@Amy I nominate you for Mom of the Year. What you just described goes so far above and beyond the job description. Kind of gives me hives too ;)
Peace (Australia) on April 27th, 2009
Loved this post Jamie! Looks like a fantastic place to take kids even for the scientifically-challenged.
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