I just attended the newly renovated Exploratorium in San Francisco. It is Disneyland for STEM geeks.
My favorite exhibit was an analog square root calculator. You place a ball at a numbered location on a ramp. The ball then rolls down the ramp and flies through the air. It hits a metal rod associated with the square root of the number on the ramp (e.g., a ball at the #16 ramp location would hit the #4 rod). The Exploratorium sets it up as an experiment to discover this relationship. It then offers a short story, a simple explanation, and a long story, a more complex explanation including equations. This is science education at its finest; Experiential learning with the appropriate explanation of mechanisms.
I was most interested in the perception and cognition exhibits. They covered the gambit from low-level sensation to social group dynamics. One of the highlights are different shaped bellows that mimic human vowel sounds. This is an idea I am bringing back to the classroom to better explain the uniqueness of human speech.
Despite the quantity and quality of exhibits, I felt The Exploratorium was lacking the long story in the perception exhibits. My appreciation for the wonders of the human nervous system increases by knowing more about the underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are many equations that can capture important properties of human perception but they were incomplete (or missing entirely).
The current Exploratorium overloaded me with ideas. I am already looking forward to my next “field trip” to see how it grows into its new space.
If I only know how to become a fellow …
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