Exploratorium San Francisco
Exploratorium is the biggest children's museum that we have seen so far in the US. Exporatorium is in the Fodor's choice list. It has expensive tickets at 30 $ per adult and 20 $ per child, which is hundred bucks for the family.
The number of sights to see is quite overwhelming. You need a full day to see and experience every single exhibit. We had only allotted four hours from a little after one to five pm. The museum is well suited for school going kids. Most exhibits are patterned as as amusement to spark the interest and an explanation to serve the insight.
I guess how a parent feels would depend on how much the parent has maintained his scientific temper. It was good to be able to relate some of the exhibits to the knowledge one had, and at the same time it was a bit intimidating when some basics fell short.
We also attended a 45 minute presentation on colors and their mixing. Very good content with very clear demonstrations that I hope would help sit these concepts into the children. A big scale demonstration of a projected beaker with colors being mixed has to have a stronger impact than reading through a text book. While we were a little unsure as to whether we would have better spent the time outside on the exhibits, I feel it was the right decision to attend the session. Two days since the visit, the colors session stands out much more clearly than the umpteen exhibits we visited.
Square root calculator, where a ball-bearing, when left from the 16th position would fall in the 4th square, and when left from the 25th position would fall in the 5th square and so on.
Strobe light on a rotating three dimensional intricate pattern that would look different based on the dial controlled strobe speed.
Movie scenes that feel completely different based on the music accompanying it as coming from two different headphones.
Halo rings being sprung up to the ceiling by pushing collected vapor. Amusing for sure to create your own rings.
All exhibits were very hands-on. You can feel your way through science. How much you gather depends on the child and the parent. I have to say since there were so many exhibits to experience, we barely had time to take the amusement and not enough to really gather the insight.
Tidal columns, with multiple giant, room height test tubes indicating the tide height at various times of the day. Amused to note that the water level was such at such time, and that the tubes are able to measure it.But, did not get the time to understand, how each tube was tied to it's time.
There was a three dimensional creative section where basic geometrical 2D shapes with angles marked like 108 degree pentagons, 60 degree triangles etc, and these have welcrows on their sides and weigh appropriately to be able to make three dimensional shapes. All that is good but spatial imagination did not come in the toolkit.
There was an exhibition of curious contraptions that were simple figures that animated as the user holds a button, a brass dragon that opened it's mouth etc. Simple artsy sciency stuff. But again, no time to think through on how the contraption is working which is what the exhibition is about.
In addition to the exhibits, there are plenty of events that seem to happen on a very consistent basis, and judging by the colors presentation, I expect them to be high quality well thought-out presentations.
All the exhibits work. There was one where vacuum was used to convert water to ice. A vacuum chamber, you push a button to put some water into the chamber, push another button to enable the vacuum suction, the more vibrating molecules gets sucked out, the lower vibrating molecules remain which leaves ice in the chamber.
Connected pendulums, when one pendulum is moved, the other starts oscillating after some time.
An exhibit showing live termites eating dead rat, demonstrating stages of the dead rat in a week, two weeks and so on. Death, up close. Science, reasoning out why termites eat which part of the rat first. Striking evidence on the inevitability of decay after death and the preciseness and method to it as demonstrated by the stages of the dead rat's appearance.
It is definitely pricey for me and that takes some fun out of the experience. Yearly membership as an idea has not really paid off for us so far. One would expect it to play out even less in a place like San Francisco where there are quite a few options to choose from to not require you to go to the same place again within a year.
The number of sights to see is quite overwhelming. You need a full day to see and experience every single exhibit. We had only allotted four hours from a little after one to five pm. The museum is well suited for school going kids. Most exhibits are patterned as as amusement to spark the interest and an explanation to serve the insight.
I guess how a parent feels would depend on how much the parent has maintained his scientific temper. It was good to be able to relate some of the exhibits to the knowledge one had, and at the same time it was a bit intimidating when some basics fell short.
We also attended a 45 minute presentation on colors and their mixing. Very good content with very clear demonstrations that I hope would help sit these concepts into the children. A big scale demonstration of a projected beaker with colors being mixed has to have a stronger impact than reading through a text book. While we were a little unsure as to whether we would have better spent the time outside on the exhibits, I feel it was the right decision to attend the session. Two days since the visit, the colors session stands out much more clearly than the umpteen exhibits we visited.
Square root calculator, where a ball-bearing, when left from the 16th position would fall in the 4th square, and when left from the 25th position would fall in the 5th square and so on.
Strobe light on a rotating three dimensional intricate pattern that would look different based on the dial controlled strobe speed.
Movie scenes that feel completely different based on the music accompanying it as coming from two different headphones.
Halo rings being sprung up to the ceiling by pushing collected vapor. Amusing for sure to create your own rings.
All exhibits were very hands-on. You can feel your way through science. How much you gather depends on the child and the parent. I have to say since there were so many exhibits to experience, we barely had time to take the amusement and not enough to really gather the insight.
Tidal columns, with multiple giant, room height test tubes indicating the tide height at various times of the day. Amused to note that the water level was such at such time, and that the tubes are able to measure it.But, did not get the time to understand, how each tube was tied to it's time.
There was a three dimensional creative section where basic geometrical 2D shapes with angles marked like 108 degree pentagons, 60 degree triangles etc, and these have welcrows on their sides and weigh appropriately to be able to make three dimensional shapes. All that is good but spatial imagination did not come in the toolkit.
There was an exhibition of curious contraptions that were simple figures that animated as the user holds a button, a brass dragon that opened it's mouth etc. Simple artsy sciency stuff. But again, no time to think through on how the contraption is working which is what the exhibition is about.
In addition to the exhibits, there are plenty of events that seem to happen on a very consistent basis, and judging by the colors presentation, I expect them to be high quality well thought-out presentations.
All the exhibits work. There was one where vacuum was used to convert water to ice. A vacuum chamber, you push a button to put some water into the chamber, push another button to enable the vacuum suction, the more vibrating molecules gets sucked out, the lower vibrating molecules remain which leaves ice in the chamber.
Connected pendulums, when one pendulum is moved, the other starts oscillating after some time.
An exhibit showing live termites eating dead rat, demonstrating stages of the dead rat in a week, two weeks and so on. Death, up close. Science, reasoning out why termites eat which part of the rat first. Striking evidence on the inevitability of decay after death and the preciseness and method to it as demonstrated by the stages of the dead rat's appearance.
It is definitely pricey for me and that takes some fun out of the experience. Yearly membership as an idea has not really paid off for us so far. One would expect it to play out even less in a place like San Francisco where there are quite a few options to choose from to not require you to go to the same place again within a year.
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