Exploratorium facts for kids
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Main entrance to the Exploratorium at Pier 15
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| Established | 1969; relocated in 2013 |
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| Location | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Type | Science, art, and human perception |
| Accreditation | AAM, ASTC |
| Visitors | 1.1 million visits annually |
| Public transit access | The Embarcadero and Green station on the F Market & Wharves streetcar line; several other routes within walking distance |
The Exploratorium is a cool museum in San Francisco, California. It's all about science, technology, and art. A physicist and teacher named Frank Oppenheimer started it in 1969.
The museum first opened at the Palace of Fine Arts. But in 2013, it moved to Piers 15 and 17, right on San Francisco's waterfront. The Exploratorium has over 1,000 hands-on exhibits. These exhibits are grouped into different areas based on what they teach. This museum has also inspired many other interactive museums around the world!
Contents
History of the Exploratorium
How the Museum Started
The idea for the Exploratorium came from Frank Oppenheimer. He was an experimental physicist and a university professor. Frank Oppenheimer worked on a big science project with his brother, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Later, he had to leave his university job.
After that, he helped high school students with their science projects. He even became the only science teacher at a high school in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. The fun, hands-on experiments he did with his students became the main idea for the Exploratorium.
In 1959, Oppenheimer joined the University of Colorado's physics department. He became more interested in making people curious and helping them ask questions. He got money to build almost a hundred science experiments. These experiments became the main collection for the Exploratorium. They also led to the Exploratorium Cookbook, which is a guide on how to build these science exhibits.
Frank Oppenheimer believed that public museums were important for science learning. In 1965, he traveled around Europe to study museums. He was inspired by three museums:
- The Palais de la Découverte, which used models to teach science. They also had students show how things worked. This idea led to the Exploratorium's famous High School Explainer Program.
- The South Kensington Museum of Science and Art.
- The Deutsches Museum in Munich, which had many interactive displays.
When he came back to the United States, Oppenheimer decided to open his own museum in San Francisco. In 1967, he moved there. He talked to scientists, businesses, and friends to get support and money. Many important scientists liked his idea. With a $50,000 grant from the San Francisco Foundation, the museum could finally be built.
Opening at the Palace of Fine Arts
In August 1969, the Exploratorium opened its doors quietly at the Palace of Fine Arts. Oppenheimer simply "opened the doors." The building needed a lot of work. But Oppenheimer wanted visitors to see exhibits being built. He wanted them to experience "the way a shop smells when you burn the wood in a saw."
A sign above the workshop, made by Barbara Perkins Gamow, said: "Here Is Being Created the Exploratorium a Community Museum Dedicated to Awareness." A copy of this motto is now above the main entrance of the new Exploratorium at Pier 15.
Oppenheimer was the museum's director until he passed away in 1985. Since then, the museum has grown a lot. It now reaches more people, helps teachers, has a big website, and works with museums all over the world.
Moving to Piers 15 and 17
In April 2013, the Exploratorium moved from the Palace of Fine Arts to Piers 15 and 17. These piers are located along the San Francisco Embarcadero. The museum signed a 66-year lease for the piers. Exhibits are mainly at Pier 15. Pier 17 holds some offices and might be used for more exhibits later.
Piers 15 and 17 are old piers, built in 1931 and 1912. The area between them used to be filled in and paved. But during construction, this fill was removed. Now, there are public plazas and open water between the piers again.
Building and Design
Fixing Up Piers 15 and 17
The Exploratorium at Pier 15 has about 330,000 square feet (30,658 square meters) of indoor and outdoor exhibit space. It also has 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of public space that anyone can visit for free. The exhibits are inside and around Pier 15, which stretches over 800 feet (244 meters) into the Bay.
The architectural firm EHDD designed the new Exploratorium. The piers were in bad shape before the museum moved in. So, a lot of repair work was needed. Almost two-thirds of the support poles under Pier 15 were fixed. New poles were also added. The old parking lot between the piers was removed slowly, and the materials were recycled.
Designers tried to keep the historic look of Pier 15. The Bay Observatory was the only new building added. Old paint was removed from the east end of the pier, showing historic letters underneath. These letters from old shipping lines were kept. Some old windows caused energy loss, but this was fixed in other ways. The old inside structures were also kept, so offices had to be built around them.
The museum also wanted to be very eco-friendly. This created some design challenges. Using natural light was important, but exhibits needed controlled light. This was solved with curtains and special paint. The glass walls of the observatory could make the building too hot. So, special "fritted glass" with thin lines was used. This glass lets light in but reduces heat and is also safe for birds.
Pier 15 has two special "seismic joints." These joints help the pier move safely during an earthquake. One joint separates the Bay Observatory from the rest of Pier 15. The other separates the whole pier from the land. This means the pier can move on its own during an earthquake, reducing damage. The café at the museum is even named the Seismic Joint because it's located where one of these joints is!
The overall style of the building is "industrial naval chic," which fits the pier's history.
Sustainability Efforts
The Exploratorium at Pier 15 aims to use zero net energy. This means it wants to produce more energy on-site than it uses each year. The museum shows off its eco-friendly efforts to teach visitors by example.
To reach its energy goal, the Exploratorium has many solar panels on its roof. There are 5,874 solar panels, covering about 78,712 square feet (7,312 square meters). They are expected to produce more energy than the building uses each year. Any extra energy goes back into the city's power grid.
The museum also uses a special heating and cooling system. It uses the cool, steady temperature of the bay water under the piers (which is about 50 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 to 18 degrees Celsius). Bay water is filtered and stored. Then, it goes through a heat exchanger to either heat or cool water that flows through pipes in the floor. There are 27 miles (43 kilometers) of plastic tubing in the floor for this system! After use, the bay water goes back into the San Francisco Bay.
Using bay water for cooling saves a lot of energy. Most of the year, the bay water is cooler than the water returning from the building's pipes. This means the system can cool the building passively, using less energy.
The Exploratorium also has a separate system for fresh air. It brings outdoor air into the building. By using bay water for heating/cooling and this fresh air system, the museum uses much less forced air. This saves energy and reduces the need for large air ducts.
The museum also saves a lot of water. Two large tanks under the pier collect up to 338,000 gallons (1,279 cubic meters) of rainwater and fog runoff. This water is reused in the building. The plumbing is designed to save water, with special urinals and toilets that use less water. The bay water heating and cooling system also saves two million gallons of drinking water each year by not needing traditional cooling towers.
The Exploratorium at Pier 15 also uses natural light to save energy. The building already had many high windows and a skylight. These were kept to let in a lot of daylight. New, high-performance glass was added to the windows.
In 2014, the Exploratorium received a special award called LEED Platinum certification. This means it's a top-level green building. The museum hopes to become the largest net-zero-energy museum in the United States, and maybe even the world!
Museum Layout and Exhibits
The new museum has over 600 exhibits. About 25% of them were made just for the Pier 15 location. Almost all exhibits are designed and built right at the museum. The indoor and outdoor spaces are divided into six main areas, each focusing on a different topic. Some exhibits can even move between different areas.
The exhibits cover many topics, like:
- How humans sense things (seeing, hearing, learning)
- Life sciences
- Physical things (light, motion, electricity, magnets)
- The local environment (water, wind, fog, rain, sun, plants, and animals of the Bay)
- Human behavior (cooperation, competition, sharing)
Bernard and Barbro Osher Gallery 1: Human Phenomenon
Gallery 1 is all about how humans behave. It encourages visitors to play with how they see things, explore memory and feelings, and try out how people work together or compete. Some exhibits include:
- Poker Face: Partners try to guess when someone is bluffing.
- Trust Fountain: A two-person drinking fountain based on a classic game about trust.
- The Tactile Dome: A completely dark maze that visitors explore only by touch.
This gallery also has the Kanbar Forum, a theater for music, science talks, and other events.
Gallery 2: Tinkering
Gallery 2 is a workshop area where visitors can build things with their hands. It's right across from the Exploratorium's own exhibit workshop, which visitors can also watch. Frank Oppenheimer wanted visitors to see and even smell the work being done. Exhibits here focus on a "do-it-yourself" style. You can even make your own stop-motion films at Animation Stations.
Some artworks in this gallery include:
- Tinkerer’s Clock: A 22-foot-tall clock with cartoon figures that visitors can move.
- Rolling Through The Bay: A sculpture made from over 100,000 toothpicks. It shows famous Bay Area landmarks, and a ping-pong ball can roll through it on different "tours."
Bechtel Gallery 3: Seeing and Reflections
Gallery 3 has many of the Exploratorium's "classic" exhibits, some of which have been there since the museum first opened. It has new and old exhibits that explore physics and how we see light, color, and sound. Examples include:
- Sound Bite: Shows how you can hear with your jawbone instead of your ears.
- Bright Black: A trick that makes you think something is white when it's mostly black.
Gordon and Betty Moore Gallery 4: Living Systems
Gallery 4 has many exhibits about life sciences. Many exhibits are about the local environment:
- Glass Settling Plate: Barnacles and other creatures grow on a plate in the Bay. You can then watch them live under a microscope.
- Algae Chandelier: Visitors can pump air to help colorful tiny plants grow in tanks above.
Other exhibits explore different living things and processes, like looking at mouse stem cells, watching live cow's eye dissections, and seeing Live Chicken Embryos at different stages of development.
Gallery 5: Outdoor Exhibits
Gallery 5 is outside on the north, south, and east sides of Pier 15. It includes both areas you need a ticket for and public areas. These exhibits focus on interacting directly with the Bay environment:
- Color of Water: An art piece with 32 different colored fabric samples hanging below the pier. Visitors can see how the Bay's water changes colors.
- Remote Rains: You can choose a past rainstorm, and a machine will recreate it with the same rain frequency, size, and speed.
On the public bridge between Piers 15 and 17, artist Fujiko Nakaya created Fog Bridge #72494. This art piece creates bursts of fog for six minutes every half-hour. It's 150 feet (46 meters) long and uses 800 nozzles to make the fog. It was supposed to be temporary, but it's now a permanent display.
Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
The Bay Observatory building, where Gallery 6 is, is the only new building on the Exploratorium's campus. It has the Seaglass restaurant downstairs and exhibits upstairs about the waterfront and city. This gallery focuses on what visitors can see in real time, like clouds, tides, ships, and ocean data. The Observatory has glass walls on all sides for great views. Many exhibits were made just for this spot:
- Oculus: A circular opening in the ceiling that lets the whole gallery act like a clock, tracking seasons and the sun's movement.
- Visualizing the Bay: A 3-D map of the Bay Area that shows real data, like fog movement or bay saltiness over time.
- Map Table: A collection of old and new maps of the area.
The Bay Observatory also has the Wired Pier project. This project uses sensors around the building to stream real-time data about the environment, like air and water quality, weather, and pollution. This data is shown in interactive ways.
Public Space
The Exploratorium campus includes 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of public space that anyone can visit. This includes the plaza facing the Embarcadero, the bridge between Piers 15 and 17 (where the Fog Bridge is), and parts of Piers 15 and 17. This public space has some cool exhibits:
- Aeolian Harp: A larger version of an old art piece that makes music from the wind.
- Bay Windows: Visitors spin disks filled with mud, sand, and gravel from different parts of the Bay.
Restaurants
The Seaglass Restaurant is on the lower level of the Bay Observatory Building. Like the Seismic Joint Cafe, it's open to everyone, even if you don't have a museum ticket. Both restaurants are run by Loretta Keller, a chef, in partnership with Bon Appetit Management Company.
Educational Programs
The Exploratorium wants to bring hands-on learning to education. It also trains teachers to teach science in this way. Between 1995 and 2012, about 6,400 teachers from 48 states and 11 countries took part in Exploratorium workshops.
Teacher Institute
The Teacher Institute started in 1984. It's a program for middle and high school science teachers. It offers workshops at the museum that teach hands-on and inquiry-based methods. It also helps new teachers. Studies show that teachers who go through this program are much more likely to stay in teaching.
The Teacher Institute also hosts the Iron Science Teacher competition. This fun competition celebrates creative science teaching. Like the TV show Iron Chef, teachers have to create classroom activities using a special "ingredient" – an everyday item like a plastic bag or a milk carton. Teachers from the Institute compete in front of a live audience to become "Iron Science Teacher."
After the museum moved to the Piers, it started offering more training for teachers. It also made two online courses available through Coursera. One course helps teachers add engineering to middle and high school STEM classes. The other helps teachers add making and tinkering activities to elementary and middle school classes.
Informal Learning Programs
The Exploratorium has several programs for informal learning (learning outside of a traditional classroom). The Institute for Inquiry (IFI) helps educators, scientists, and leaders learn how to use inquiry in science education. It offers workshops and online resources.
The Tinkering Studio started in 2008. It's a program that focuses on "thinking with your hands." It has a special space in the museum where visitors can do free do-it-yourself activities. It also shares its ideas with teachers, afterschool programs, and other museums. The Exploratorium also works with Boys and Girls Clubs in San Francisco to offer afterschool tinkering programs.
The Exploratorium also has other learning resources:
- The Learning Commons: A library and media center with science teaching resources for teachers.
- A webcast studio: It produces 75 educational webcasts each year from the museum and around the world.
- Lifelong Learning: This program creates educational activities for kids, teens, families, and adults. It includes day camps, family workshops, classes for homeschooled students, and workshops for girls aged 9–11.
The Exploratorium has also published many books. Its website has over 50,000 pages with hands-on activity ideas and science experiments.
Educational Outreach
The Exploratorium has several outreach programs. The Community Outreach Program works with local groups to offer educational activities for kids and families who might not otherwise visit the museum. The Exploratorium also has XTech, a science program for middle school students who need extra support. XTech serves over 100 students each year.
Explainers Program
The Exploratorium Explainer program has been running since the museum opened. It hires and trains high school students and young educators each year. After the move to Pier 15 in 2013, the program grew to hire 300 Explainers.
Explainers are like guides. They help visitors understand the exhibits. There are two types: High School Explainers (teenagers) and Field Trip Explainers (college students and young educators). Both are paid positions.
Frank Oppenheimer started this program because he wanted visitors to have a learning experience where they could guess and explore, not just get "correct" answers. He felt young people would be better at creating this open-ended experience. He also wanted the program to help students learn outside of school. The Explainers come from many different backgrounds, and Oppenheimer hoped they would bring their families and friends to the museum.
The Explainer Program was inspired by staff demonstrations Frank saw at a museum in Paris. The success of the Exploratorium's program even led the Paris museum to hire teenage explainers too! Many former Explainers say their time at the Exploratorium helped them succeed, including several famous tech CEOs.
Art at the Exploratorium
Even though it's known as a science museum, the Exploratorium has always combined science and art. As early as 1966, Frank Oppenheimer talked about how art and science are connected.
The official artist-in-residence program started in 1974. But artworks were being created for the museum even earlier. Since the program began, over 250 artworks have been made.
Each year, the museum invites 10 to 20 artists to work there for two weeks to two years. These artists work with museum staff and visitors to create new art pieces, exhibits, or performances. Artists get money, housing, travel help, and technical support. They can use the Exploratorium's metal and woodworking shops. Two artists who were once artists-in-residence and later joined the staff have won special "genius" grants: Walter Kitundu and Ned Kahn.
The new museum at the Embarcadero opened with over 40 artworks by famous artists. The Center for Art and Inquiry is a new project at the museum that helps bring art into all parts of the museum.
The Exploratorium also has a long history with music, film, and other performances. Famous artists like Laurie Anderson, John Cage, and Philip Glass have performed there.
Besides artists-in-residence, the museum's Osher Fellows Program hosts 4-8 scholars, scientists, educators, and artists each year. Famous Osher Fellows have included Walter Murch and Oliver Sacks.
Museum's Influence
Impact on Other Museums
The Exploratorium has inspired science museums all over the world. This includes the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego and the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In 2003, a book called The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science said that about 400 science centers in 43 countries were started because of the Exploratorium's example.
Website
The Exploratorium's website has been online since 1992. It was one of the first museums to have a website. The site gets 13 million visitors each year. It has won six Webby Awards for being a great science or education website.
Events
Community π Day started at the Exploratorium by Larry Shaw. It's celebrated every year on March 14 (3/14). The Iron Science Teacher competition, like Iron Chef, shows science teachers creating activities with a special ingredient. There are also monthly events like "Full-Spectrum Science with Ron Hipschman." Every Thursday, the museum has "After Dark" events just for adults.
Other Places to Visit
The Exploratorium also has exhibits in public spaces around the Bay Area. The Outdoor Exploratorium has 14 exhibits about the local environment. They are placed outside in the Fort Mason area and anyone can visit them for free.
See also
- List of science centers
