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Exploratorium

San FranciscoAttractionscience
Exploratorium
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More than 650 hands-on exhibits turn light, sound, motion and human perception into things visitors can test for themselves.

Guide's tip. The current schedule lists Sunday noon to 5 p.m., Monday closed, Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursday evening hours for adults. Special installations can close for maintenance, so check the official visit page.

On a walking tour. Stop 2 of 10 on the walking tour San Francisco, waterfront to Golden Gate, every stop on a map in walking order.

about 120 min for a visit

The story

Physicist and teacher Frank Oppenheimer opened the Exploratorium in 1969 with a radical idea: visitors should learn by touching, testing and noticing instead of only reading conclusions. The museum moved from the Palace of Fine Arts to Pier 15 in 2013, bringing its experiments beside the bay.

The collection now holds more than 650 hands-on exhibits. Some make invisible forces visible. Others reveal how eyes and ears edit the world before the mind calls it reality. Outdoor works use the tide, fog, wind and daylight as materials, so the building never fully separates itself from San Francisco.

Begin outside with Fog Bridge when it is operating. Inside, resist the urge to complete every gallery. Choose one experiment, predict what will happen and then let the result surprise you. Carry that changed attention back to the waterfront on the route to PIER 39.

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Nearby in San Francisco