It’s Child’s Play at Two Museums

“Follow us,” the kids commanded and led the way as we slid, crawled and climbed barefoot through 13 small chambers of a pitch-black dome. We felt our way along the narrow passageways, touching who-knows-what: a spoon here, a rubber mat there, blocks, a chain or a bicycle seat. Could that squishy thing be a silicone breast implant? It was impossible to tell for sure.

Finally, we slid out into the light and into a vat of dry beans. Ten-year-old Matt and 8-year-old Reggie couldn’t wait to start through the Tactile Dome again. I needed to catch my breath.

Welcome to San Francisco’s Exploratorium, considered by many to be the nation’s premier science museum and the model for hundreds of interactive and innovative museum exhibits around the world. Museum officials routinely make pilgrimages here for help in planning new museums: More than 500 teachers attend classes each year to learn new approaches to teaching science. All year long, visual and performing artists in residence create new works for the museum.

Everywhere in the cavernous two-acre space--there are no walls--science is happening as kids and their parents turn cranks, push buttons, pull knobs and work computers. Adults bend over one bank of blinking computers, learning how risky behavior increases the chances of getting AIDS. Kids race from area to area, designing a giant bubble here, humming into an echo chamber there, finger painting on a computer in one spot, touching a real miniature tornado in another. It’s impossible not to get excited about science here.

And this summer, the Exploratorium is hosting a festival of sound and music with more than 200 performances and 45 interactive exhibits in the new permanent Sound Studio. Learn how to build instruments or produce musical tracks; try the Whistle Machine or crank a giant music box.

“No one has ever flunked a science museum,” Exploratorium founder Frank Oppenheimer wrote. Twenty-five years ago, the late Oppenheimer, a physics professor (and brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb), created a place where adults and children alike could experience scientific phenomena for themselves. Here they could make their own discoveries about light or color, motion, electricity, heat and the weather . . . among other things. Thanks to Oppenheimer’s vision, we not only have the Exploratorium but a rapidly growing number of interactive exhibits at museums around the world.

“This doesn’t look like a museum,” a very pleased Matt announced, taking in the noisy, bustling scene.

Nor does the Exploratorium look like a museum from the outside. Located at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, it is housed in the domed neoclassical Palace of Fine Arts, built for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. (General museum admission is $8.50 for adults, $4.50 for children 6-17 and $2 for 3- to 5-year-olds. Call 415-561-0360.)

Inside, there are no walls--just concrete floors and open space filled with more than 650 experiment areas. We stepped into Shadow Box, a three-sided room with phosphorescent wallpaper that freezes and holds shadows temporarily when a strobe light flashes them on the wall. In the Distorted Room, a 10-foot-by-10-foot area with no right angles causes optical illusions, making the people inside appear to shrink and grow. We also stood inside a tornado.

The focus throughout the Exploratorium is on perception as much as on pure science: How do we see or hear, smell, feel or basically experience the world around us?

The Tactile Dome is a case in point. (Reservations are a must and the Dome commands an extra charge, which includes museum entrance. Until July 1, it costs $8; after that the price will be $10. Children under 7 are not admitted to the dome and reservations for weekends should be made four to eight weeks in advance. For reservations, call 415-561-0362.) In our allotted hour, we made our way through the Dome again and again, feeling different things each time: a rubber hose, sheepskin, rope, jingle bells and, yes, those were breast implants.

“This is the best part of our week in San Francisco,” Matt said. Hours later, we were still shaking beans out of our clothes.

Exploratorium staff explained that the free-wheeling environment may look chaotic but is actually carefully planned to provide an optimal hands-on learning experience. But be forewarned: The exhibits are geared for grade-school kids and some will probably require explanation from an adult.

Conversely, most children won’t need any help at the Bay Area Discovery Museum near Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge. While preschoolers may enjoy the swirl of activity at the Exploratorium, they really get a workout at the Discovery Museum.

Housed in seven historic turn-of-the-century buildings at Ft. Baker, the Bay Area museum doubled in size in 1993 and is packed with indoor as well as outdoor activities. It’s guaranteed to amuse the diaper set as well as their older brothers and sisters.

Small children “fish” from the indoor Discovery Boat or crawl through a faux “sea tunnel” in the San Francisco Bay Hall. They build skyscrapers from plastic bricks, play instruments in the Tot Spot music room or climb around an old Model T automobile.

Meanwhile, the grade school crowd likes to get lost in the Maze of Illusions, make videos in the Media Center, take nature hikes and design bridges. We made elaborate puppets that we got to keep.

Check out the summer exhibit of kid-made cars contributed by Bay Area children. And be sure to ask about special workshops. (Admission is $5 for adults and children. Call 415-487-4398.)

The pace at the Discovery Museum may be less frenetic than at the Exploratorium but the intent is the same: Let the kids experience and explore for themselves. They’ll learn as they go.

“Too bad school isn’t this much fun,” Matt said, with a sigh.

Meanwhile, Reggie is planning a letter campaign to try to convince local museums to build a tactile dome near home.