by Cynthia Wall

Created on: October 24, 2008   Last Updated: March 29, 2012

The big gold button on The Exploratorium internet website reads DO NOT PUSH THIS BUTTON. So of course I did, just as everyone who visits the Exploratorium public science museum in San Francisco is going to push buttons on all the exhibits. Housed in the Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District, the Exploratorium has been drawing in and educating inquisitive minds and fingers since 1969.

With over 650 exhibits, such as the Tactile Dome, a three-dimensional pitch-black labyrinth that must be explored by touch, a live cow's eye dissection, and a chicken egg outside its shell with its heart still beating, the Exploratorium is an educator's delight. It also offers a legitimate "gross" factor to give kids something to talk about while teaching them basic biology.

New exhibits are added all the time and many of the exhibits are so successful that other museums replicate them. A few such as the Wave Organ, a sonic experience on a nearby point of land jutting into San Francisco Bay are unique to the Exploratorium. One of the current exhibits is titled Ice Stories and features photos, videos, and blogs from polar scientists documenting their field work. Visitors can follow them in real time and read and hear their excitement such as that expressed when landing in Antarctica.

There were only a few windows in the plane, but once we had made it below about 70 degrees south latitude, everybody got really excited and word spread that there was something other than water or clouds to see. The line grew longer and longer, but I finally made it to the front and had a peak out the window.my first view of Antarctica!

The Exploratorium, which currently draws over 500,000 visitors a year, was the idea of Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, a physics professor made famous by his work on The Manhattan Project with his brother, Robert. After the war, he returned to teaching but was harassed by the Anti-American Committee of the McCarthy era. He became a cattle rancher for ten years but then went back to teaching. In 1965 while visiting European museums, he became convinced of the need for teaching museums in America. From 1969 until now, the qualities that made Frank Oppenheimer so special (inventiveness, playfulness, excellence, and a respect for looking at things in a new way) are represented in each exhibit.

For example, in The Traits of Life Exhibit, visitors actually use microscopes to study different organisms and tissues. And if you're brave, you can actually participate in the cow's eye

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