August 22, 2004

The Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is my favorite San Francisco science museum: lots of wonderful hands-on and easy-to-watch exhibits for all ages. My favorite exhibits are the electromagnetism ones.

Off in a corner, however, is an exhibit that I've never seen anybody else pay attention to. A red laser shines down an eight-foot table and hits a screen at the far end. You can either let the laser beam shine, and look at the dot; put a narrow slit in front of the laser beam, and watch it spread out; or force it through two narrow slits, and look at the interference pattern--the fact that there are then places that the light could go but really doesn't want to go.

I always find this wave-nature-of-light demonstration absolutely fascinating...

Posted by DeLong at August 22, 2004 01:23 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Check out Bell's paradox to find out what light will and will not do.

Posted by: Chuck Nolan at August 22, 2004 01:56 PM

I thought that QED showed that all properties of light can be explained with a model involving just particles, but the math is too hard for most of us (at least for me).

Posted by: Venky at August 22, 2004 03:55 PM

One reason some people dont pay attention to it is its often not working -- like 1/6 of theExplorataorim's exhibits. it would be nice if they put the effort into dusting them all off and making them all work.

That said, still a great place.

Posted by: paulo at August 22, 2004 07:18 PM

Venky, yes, QED shows that all the wave-like behaviors of light can be explained by postulating a particle that behaves exactly like a wave.

Posted by: J Thomas at August 22, 2004 08:35 PM

The Exploratorium is the best "museum" in the country.

Posted by: The Wild-Eyed Fool at August 22, 2004 09:38 PM

Forget the Exploratorium and head to the Cliff House by the beach. Test your grip, get your fortune told, watch a nickelodeon, and try to recall those whistful days of yore when a group of young kids could ride a trolley across town and spend a whole day at the amusement park with just a dollar or two, without laughtracks and cutting to commercial every two minutes, or sitting in front of some "exploration" box so utterly banal and learning-center scripted that it's no wonder today's kids are addle-brained.

When I was a kid, Saturdays we'd get up before Mom and Pop, pilfer Pop's wallet for some loose change, jump on the bus downtown, and spend the entire day at Riverview in Chicago, a freakshow of arcanery, bearded ladies and lizard men, the Bobbs and the Comet roller coasters, barkers and shoe-shine men and hurry, hurry, hurry, living a total fantasy for those brief moments in fun

Life today is like the laugh track on South Park.
(You'll get it in a moment....%)

Posted by: Harry Possue at August 22, 2004 11:21 PM

I used to spend half an hour staring at the could chamber, waiting for a spontaneous fission (the big ones) cloud. Mostly it was just ordinary cosmic rays.
Intellectually it was just about as fulfilling as looking at a lava lamp, but still, it was ok by me.

Posted by: walter willis at August 23, 2004 01:19 AM

Ah, I was fairly ordinary. My last visit to the Exploratorium was when I was 12, and, like most kids, I just liked to blow (or, rather, _wave_) big-ass bubbles. My interests would possibly be rather different now, fourteen years later ... but probably not.

Posted by: Kurt Montandon at August 23, 2004 01:34 AM

Ack! Your RSS feed isn't putting out full posts anymore! Ack! What happened?

Yeah, the Exploratorium rules! I like rolling stuff on that big spinning disk. Then again, I am very easily amused.

Posted by: fling93 at August 23, 2004 11:17 AM

Ah! Much better. Thanks!

Posted by: fling93 at August 26, 2004 10:32 AM