The need for a guide like this one became obvious. There are many ways to incorporate interactive science activities into your classroom. In the articles that follow, we will show you how several of our local teachers use the Snackbook to help their students create science exhibits of their own. We hope that this magazine will give you a few new ideas. Soap Film Painting is an excellent example of an Exploratorium exhibit.
Visitors pull a long rod up out of a tray of soap solution to create a wall of soap film.
They can poke the soap film and break it, blow into it to make it bulge, or wiggle it to make standing waves. With patient observation, the visitor can watch the wall of pastel colors change with time as the soap film thins to the thickness of a wavelength of light and less. As children and adults explore the exhibit, they are exposed to a tremendous range of scientific concepts from the nature of surface tension to the interference of light.