Portable Exhibit
Exploratorium: Community Outreach
Summer 2017
Work Field:
Work Project
Roles:
Design
Manufacturing
Design
Manufacturing
The Exploratorium is a museum of science, technology, and arts in San Francisco. It hosts many community outreach programs that deliver the fun of science to underrepresented communities. One of the projects I had during my time of work was to recreate an existing exhibit in a form which could be brought to and shared with a larger audience.
This model takes the Bay Window Exhibit, originally developed by Andrew Forrest, and puts it in a compact easy to share mini-exhibit. I chose this exhibit to recreate as I found myself fascinated with how particles moved in water and thought this was a perfect way to showcase that wonder. The original model is a large, 1.2-meter disk anchored to the pier that showcases the phenomena of turbulent flow and upwelling using sand, gravel, and silt collected from the bay.
Design Considerations:
Choosing the correct scale for my model was a major part of the design. It needed to be large enough to showcase the phenomena yet small enough to be portable and able to be used by its primary audience, children. I iterated through many scales of the exhibit until I found the right balance of portability and functionality. Using laser-cut acrylic and silicone tubing I created the main housing for my final 1:10 scale model which measures 4.2" in diameter. I tested many sizes of crushed fiberglass particles to achieve the correct density composition to replicate the same phenomena as the original exhibit.
