The Exploratorium science museum in downtown San Francisco is only 25 minutes from where we live. And every time we visit, it’s new.

Our experience is always different – microscopic cells, global weather patterns, local tides of the bay, magnetic, electrical, conceptual, sensory, filled with motion, sound and light.

The video above is our last visit; below is our first video, just after the new Exploratorium opened on Pier 15.

When our children were little, we spent many weekends at the Exploratorium in its original location at the Palace of Fine Arts. It was a big, open-air, get-your-hands-grubby space, where kids could be noisy and excited about trying all the hands-on science activities in the museum.

The Exploratorium was the vision of Frank Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist and science teacher. After opening in 1969, every year the Exploratorium exhibits changed and expanded, and in 2013, the museum relocated to its current location on Pier 15 along the Embarcadero.

The Exploratorium is a place for kids to discover the world in all dimensions. After exploring inside the museum, go outside, walk around the decks, tug at the metal model of the Golden Gate Bridge to make it oscillate up and down, watch waves lapping against the piling, and stop to spend a few moments just watching boats on the bay. What a wonderful world it is.

 

 

Watch more Exploratorium videos:

• Exploratorium 2 – Our second Exploratorium video with the Fog Bridge.
• San Francisco “Rolling Through the Bay” – Imagine what you can do with over 100,000 toothpicks and bottles of Elmer’s Glue! Created by Scott Weaver, watch ping pong balls rolling through a model of San Francisco.