After Dark: Let's Have a Ball

Celebrate the new year with a round of bubbly-and a plethora of spherical phenomena. Don goofy goggles to play your favorite schoolyard games with altered sight, and see what happens once you take them off. Peer at circular denizens of the biosphere, such as rotating colonies of Volvox, a genus of green algae, and learn about the unique attributes of spherical viruses. Wrap your head around atomic models, try your hand at mapping the globe, and cover your ears as we use liquid nitrogen to explode a bin full of 3,000 ping-pong balls to fete the year ahead.

Schedule:

PRESENTATIONS
Dissecting a Sphere or What's Inside a Baseball Anyway?
With Ken Finn
7:00 p.m. | Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio
When you grab a baseball, you don't necessarily think of it as being bouncy. But that's exactly what happens when a baseball hits a bat: it bounces-deforming for an instant, then springing back to its original shape. See how this works by watching a super-strong water balloon bounce in slow-motion. And since one way to find out how something works is by looking inside it, Ken will take apart some balls to see what they're made of.
Pacific Pinball Museum
With Michael Schiess
8:00 p.m. | Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio

Learn the peculiar history of pinball, from a rainy-day alternative to croquet in eighteenth-century France to a post-World War II American arcade craze. Discover the little-known world of pinball art, and find out how the Pacific Pinball Museum is working to preserve historic examples of this popular game.
The Physicist and the Sphere
With Patio Plasma
9:00 p.m. | Phyllis C. Wattis Webcast Studio

From atoms to cows to planets and stars, spheres appear when physicists model the universe. For example, scientists have recently created the most perfect spheres ever made to test Einstein's theory of general relativity, and to count the number of atoms in a mole. Open your eyes to the spheres around us, and find out why physicists love them.
Ping-Pong Ball Explosion
With Julie Yu and Eric Muller
9:30 p.m. | East Gallery
Ring in the new year in a shower of delight as we use liquid nitrogen to explode a 45 gallon trash can full of 3,000 ping-pong balls. Cover your ears for the big boom, and then enjoy the sprinkling sounds of excitement

"Catch" A Virus
With Laura Satkamp and Kelsey Haas of the Gladstone Institutes
6:00–10:00 p.m. | East Gallery Corridor
Why are some human viruses spherical? How are influenza, HPV, HIV, and dengue similar to the common cold? Come "get infected" with temporary virus tattoos, play with supersize virus models, explore their shapes and scale, and learn about their impact on human health.
Volleying Volvox
6:00–10:00 p.m. | East Gallery, Microscope Imaging Station
Visit the Microscope Imaging Station to see live, verdant colonies of Volvox, a genus of around 20 species of freshwater green algae found worldwide. Volvox form spherical or oval hollow colonies that contain some 500 to 60,000 cells embedded in a gelatinous wall. The colonies are often just visible to the naked eye.
Juggling
With the Berkeley Juggling Club
6:00–10:00 p.m. | Throughout museum
The Berkeley Juggling Club returns to the Exploratorium (last seen at the outdoor program Market Days: Toys in 2014) to roam the floor, juggling balls for your amusement throughout the night.