Next month the Exploratorium, the hands-on science museum created by the physicist Frank Oppenheimer four decades ago, will open its doors at its new location at Pier 15 on the San Francisco waterfront.
On Monday, however, it will be possible to get a virtual preview of the museum’s learn-by-doing approach with the introduction of “Sound Uncovered,†the second free iPad application developed by the Exploratorium staff. In 2011, its first effort, “Color Uncovered,†drew an enthusiastic audience, and was ultimately downloaded more than one million times, at one point rising to second place among all free applications on Apple’s app store charts.
“That was great because that’s right in there with Facebook and things like that,†said Robert Semper, a physicist who is the Exploratorium’s executive associate director.
In each case the programs try to convey a physical experience that is similar to the exhibitions found on the floor of the highly interactive museum.
âœOne of the beauties of our group is that we get to pull from the physical museum, we get to pull from the science expertise of our content people on staff, we get to pull from the teachers who have figured out all of these cool experiments,†said Jean Cheng, project director of the online engagement group at the Exploratorium. “It’s like this endless buffet of options and you have to decide, ‘How much can we do’â€
Both applications explore illusions as a means of explaining different qualities and properties of light and sound. “We’re pretty familiar with optical illusions, but auditory illusions are much less common,†she said.
Each application is divided into chapter-like experiments. In Sound Uncovered, for example, an experiment titled “Find the Highest Note†challenges the user to find the highest note, playing tricks with pitch and volume. By playing sounds on an onscreen keyboard it is possible to explore how the auditory system works and understand pattern re! cognition.
Other experiments in Sound Uncovered make it possible to record your voice and play it backward; illusions that make it possible for your eyes to fool your ears; as well as a hearing test making it possible to determine how your hearing compares to that of others.
One of the strengths of the applications compared with the actual museum is that people are more willing to experiment and try things out when they feel more at ease and less as if they performing in public.
About a half million people each year visited the Exploratorium at its original site at the Palace of Fine Arts. That number is expected to expand dramatically with the opening of the Pier 15 location, which is one of the cornerstones of a revamped San Francisco waterfront. This year, the America’s Cup sailboat races will be held at the waterfront.
The online reach of the museum will still extend far beyond the actual museum. Currently there are about 12 million visitors each year to the Exploratorium Web site.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 12, 2013
An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of the Exploratorium.
