San Fran Travelogue

Pier 15 along the Embarcadero houses the amazing Exploratorium science center, voted in the book Forces For Good as one of the 12 most effective non-profits in the U.S. and was the only museum to

 make the list.  Since it's re-opening along the Pier system off the Bay, it has become a world-wide model for hands-on science, exhibits, and teacher training.  When we arrived at opening on our second day to San Fran, we approached the multi-level museum up on the top level, at the Observatory deck, where sun, water, erosion, light reflection (camera obscura) exhibits matched the

view of the bay and bridge.  Up along the main wall, just above the map-racks, was an enormous screen feeding a live cast of the Nautilus and its attendant radio-controlled submersibles, The Argus and Hercules, which happened to be exploring that morning off the coast of California seeking evidence of methane leaks

at the highly-charged tectonic ocean floor and also the wreckage sight of one of the most famous dirigibles in U.S. history, the USS Macon.  The Macon had a short but fairly famous life span back in the early 1930's – the second largest helium ship ever constructed, just shy of the famous Hindenburg.

On a fateful trip across the continent it ran into a severe storm off the coast of California and was able to gently land off of Monterrey Bay, and immediately sunk, losing only two of its 76 member crew.  The museum staff said that what we were watching was a narrated tour of the sight from members above surface and they would be calling in directly to the Exploratorium later that day for a live public interview where questions could be asked from the crowd.  Below, on other levels, we

Walkway outside of the Exploratorium

experimented with fog, watched a cow's eye dissection, experienced a color-less (but lit) room, and learned how such a structure atop an enormous pier jutting out into the bay could one day become a zero energy facility.  The original Exploratorium was the brain-child of Robert Oppenheimer, a famous physicist who at one point in his illustrious career decided to turn away from academia in

search of more hands-on approaches to the sciences and constructed over the year hundreds of exhibits the purpose of learning in what he called a sort of cookbook of exhibits which are now used world-wide as a model for understanding our world.