Serendip's Fun and Interactive Exhibits

Some of Serendip's exhibits require Flash or Shockwave to be installed on your computer. They're available free from Adobe -- click here to be taken to a website where you may download them. Update: additional help with running Shockwave.

• Making Sense of Understanding: The Three Doors of Serendip: What is "understanding"? How can one have it without knowing how one got it? How can one account for differences between different people in understanding the same thing? requires Java capable browser

• Hofstadter's Road Sign: What is reality? Can you deconstruct and reconstruct the road sign in at least four ways? requires Java capable browser
  

• Chance in Life and the World: Can we see chance, as Schrodinger does, as the ground from which order derives? Pay attention and see the hidden messages that statistical regularity can reveal to you! requires Java capable browser
  

• Ambiguous Figures: Can you see an image in multiple ways? an experiment in "reality," requires Java capable browser for the animated examples

• Evolution as Reproduction with Variability An interactive exhibit that highlights the role of randomness and variation in driving evolution.

• Coordination without a leader: flocking An interactive exhibit that explores a model of flocking behavior.

• Ant Colonies: Can you have social organization without a director?
  an experiment with models, requires Java capable browser
  

• The World of Langton's Ant: What is "purpose" and "purposeful" behavior and does one imply the other?
  an experiment with models, requires Java capable browser
  

• Thinking About Segregation and Integration: Why do people cluster with others with similar characteristics?
  an experiment with models, requires Java capable browser
  
  
• Seeing More Than Your Eye Does: Does your brain make up stories? A "blindspot" experiment.

• Perception and the Brain: Contrast/Color "Illusions", Ball and Shadow, Spiral Illusion, Presumptions Underlying Contrast Illusions, Figure Ground Reversal - Is reality constant? How does your brain use visual information to create an overall picture?

• The Free Will Problem: Can you control what you do?
  an experiment with ambiguous figures

• Prisoners' Dilemma: Cooperate or compete?
  a game studied by people in a variety of disciplines, including biology, sociology and public policy, uses CGI programing

• The Game of Life : Does an ordered system require a planner? A game of emergence, requires Java capable browser also available without the rules revealed so that you can discover them yourself.

• From Random Motion to Order: Diffusion and Some of It's Implications

• Diffusion: Heterogeneous mixtures

• The Magic Sierpinski Triangle: Can order depend on randomness?
  the chaos game, requires Java capable browser

• Can You See What You Don't See?: Do you need to know you saw it to have seen it?
  a blindsight experiment, requires Java capable browser

• Tricks of the Eyes, Wisdom of the Brain: Does your brain throw things away?
  a lateral inhibition network experiment, with optical illusions, requires Java capable browser

• Simple Networks, Simple Rules: Learning and Creating Categories: Can simple things learn?
  an experiment with a perceptron learning algorithm, requires Java capable browser

• On Beyond Newton: From Simple Rules to Stability, Fluctuation, and Chaos: Can simple rules result in ordered systems or chaos?
  some experiments in unpredictablity, requires Java capable browser

• Ways of Making Sense of the World: From Primal Patterns to Deterministic and Non-Deterministic Emergence - An exhibit and models using cellular automata to explore emergent behavior and, more broadly, different approaches to inquiry.

• Time To Think?: Is brain = behavior?
  an experiment using reaction times, with capability of doing your own research, requires Shockwave plugin

• Transformation: Wander, explore, can you find heaven?
  an experience

• Serendip's House (in progress): Where am I and where is the frog gallery?
  a navigation game, requires Shockwave plugin

• The Four Color Problem: How many colors do you need to color a map of the world?
  a math game, requires Shockwave plugin
  
  
• Voyage to Serendip: Can you find Serendip?
  a game with different searching strategies, uses CGI programing

• Remember the Source: How is your memory?
  an experiment in human cognition and memory, requires Flash 6 plug-in

Interactive activities, some used other places on Serendip for other reasons, and others just because ...?

The idea, of course, is that there isn't a whole lot of difference between playing and learning ... exploring is the underpinnings and enjoyment inherent in both.

If that idea makes you think of either play or education in new ways, so much the better.

Regardless, the web provides not only information and pictures, but also the wherewithal to have experiences that you might not otherwise have a chance to have.

And creating such things to play with (and maybe even to learn from) is a large part of what Serendip is about, so browse the list.

And have fun.

If in addition you'd like to read/think more about play itself, there's a list of relevant links below.