The San Francisco Exploratorium
was created in the early 1970's by J. Robert Oppenheimer's brother. I have had two experiences with the
Exploratorium that I wish to mention. Both negative.
In the late 1970's I donated a Japanese Magic Mirror (
Makyoh) to the Exploatorium.
I included translations of Japanese research journal reports on how the
mirror worked. The mirror casts an image on the wall (mine was a
standing Shakyamuni
Buddha) and it was in focus at any distance, reflecting sunlight. The
Japanese documents I provided reported on a microscopic study of the
surface of the mirror and explained that it was an hologram created by
trial and error.
I had taken the mirror to a traditional Kyoto
craftsman to be polished. He had spent about an hour, while I watched
him, polishing the mercury surface with pear oil and a cloth.
The Exploratorium lost the mirror, when I checked about a year after donating it. It had cost me about $600 and today would be worth about $6,500 with inflation and the changing value of the yen.
About the same time I made a proposal to the Exploratorium to create a device to measure earth tides. The same tides that flow around the world twice a day, created by the earth-moon interaction, are visible on the oceans because they can average +/- 3 feet around the mean. On large land surfaces they only measure +/- one foot and are not visible.
The land tidal wave device I proposed was a laser set up 8 miles away from the Exploratorium that was focused on a mirror that reflected inside a dark chamber in the
Exploratorium and recorded the wave motion on a photo sensitive paper.
The staff had no interest in the idea. To this day I've never seen any device that shows people the land wave that travels under our feet and our houses twice a day.
Consistent with the low level of scientific competence and integrity of the Exploratorium, the current exhibits have plenty about the non-existent man made global warming hysteria. But the Exploratorium doesn't understand that it is hysteria.