By Rupert Clayton, HANC Land Use Chair

After a year of prototyping and planning, a team from the Exploratorium is close to finalizing their set of exhibits for a two-year display around Alvord Lake at the Haight St entrance to Golden Gate Park. The approach they have selected is based on “Pathways and Pauses”, with some experiences designed to engage people just passing through that area of the park and others intended to encourage a longer stay to focus on particular physical phenomena.

The Lake Dock area will contain two exhibits that reveal the microscopic organisms at work in and around Alvord Lake

The Pathway elements will be the Hello Highway (aka High Five Zone), a fun way to interact with other park visitors, and the Tree Timeline, showing growth of annual rings over 150 years. Two Pauses will examine the amount of carbon fixed by the lake’s green algae and the colorful bacteria of the lake and surrounding soil. Three other Pauses will focus on aspects of the sand dunes that covered western San Francisco: the source of the surprising magnetism of some of the sand; the fluid dynamics of dunes in motion; and the role of introduced grasses in stabilizing the dunes to create today’s park.

Staff from the Exploratorium will provide a preview at HANC’s next member meeting, Thursday September 12, 7 pm at Park Branch Library, 1833 Page Street.