Visit The Exploratorium for Free This Year
Admission to San Francisco’s hands-on science museum, the Exploratorium, will be free on six different days this year, with the first date arriving on February 1.
Clothing retailer Uniqlo is sponsoring the free days to inspire the next generation of innovators, according to the company. Activities offered at the museum on Pier 15 along the Embarcadero include exhibits, webcasts, websites and events for visitors to explore and better understand the world around them.
February 1: Early Groundhog Day party and shadow sightings of another kind.
March 14: Annual Pi Day celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π.
May 10: Mother’s Day/Día de las Madres activities for moms to explore their inner scientist with the whole family; bilingual programs will be available in both English and Spanish.
September 27: Collaboration with the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers as part of Latino Engineering Day/Dia de la Ingenieria to honor prominent Latino engineers and the engineering heritage of Latinos; bilingual programs will be available in both English and Spanish.
October 11: In honor of Founder’s Day, celebrate physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, who established the Exporatorium in 1969.
December 6: Start the Winter holiday season festivities and buy presents for scientists and geeks at the museum’s store.
Since the opening of the Exploratorium, more than 1,000 participatory exhibits have been created, of which about 600 are on the floor at any given time. The exhibit-building workshop space contained within the museum is open to view and beyond the public exhibition space, the Exploratorium helps professionally develop teachers, promote science education reform, and spread the word on museums as informal education centers.
The new Exploratorium building, which opened in 2013 after moving from its original site at the Palace of Fine Arts, showcases environmental sustainability efforts as part of its goal to become the largest net-zero museum in the country.
