For those who were intrigued by the 2019 National Math Festival, but unable to travel to Washington, D.C., visitors were invited to play along closer to home by visiting one of 80+ museums in 40+ states around the U.S.that offered Zometool Bubble Station demos on Saturday, May 4th.
Explore Math at a Zometool Bubble Station
Zometool is a construction set that allow players to build beautiful and fascinating models from simple to profound. In fact, NASA has used Zometool for AIDS virus research in space and for a space station project! And the bubbles? Why, they’re soap bubbles, of course – but with a geometric twist.
Can you imagine using a bubble wand and dish soap to make a square bubble? How about a cubic, spiral, saddle-shaped, wormhole, or parabolic-shaped bubble? With the Zometool Bubble Stations, everyone from young kids to grown-up mathematicians will find delight in exploring how the principle of “minimal surfaces” makes possible not just the round soap bubbles we all know from our childhoods, but—with differently shaped Zometool “bubble frames”—geometric soap bubbles of many surprising forms.
Photo Gallery: 2019 Festival Museum Events
We hope you enjoy these photos from many of our participating museum partners!
2019 Festival: Participating Museums
Museums that are members of the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) were invited to celebrate the 2019 National Math Festival by hosting Zometool Bubble Station demos and other mathy activities at their institutions on Saturday, May 4, 2019. You can also read about a Geometric Bubble Blowing event hosted by the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California.
Alabama
- Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center (Mobile)
- McWane Science Center (Birmingham)
- Southern Museum of Flight (Birmingham)
Arkansas
- Mid-America Science Museum (Hot Springs)
Arizona
- Arizona Science Center (Phoenix)
- Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff)
California
- CuriOdyssey (San Mateo)
- Fleet Science Center (San Diego)
- Gateway Science Museum (Chico)
- Lawrence Hall of Science (Berkeley)
- Livermore Science and Society Center (Livermore)
- Powerhouse Science Center (Sacramento)
- Sacramento Children’s Museum (Rancho Cordova)
- Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History (Santa Cruz)
Colorado
- CU Science Discovery (Boulder)
Connecticut
- Discovery Museum (Bridgeport)
- KidsPlay Children’s Museum (Torrington)
Delaware
- Delaware Museum of Natural History (Wilmington)
Florida
- Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee (Tallahassee)
- Emerald Coast Science Center (Fort Walton Beach)
- Pensacola MESS Hall (Pensacola)
Idaho
- Discovery Center of Idaho (Boise)
Illinois
- Children’s Discovery Museum (Normal)
- Discovery Center Museum (Rockford)
Indiana
- Science Central (Fort Wayne)
- Terre Haute Children’s Museum (Terre Haute)
Iowa
- Family Museum (Bettendorf)
Kansas
- Exploration Place (Wichita)
Kentucky
- The Living Arts and Science Center (Lexington)
Maine
- L.C. Bates Museum (Hinckley)
Maryland
- Discovery Station at Hagerstown, Inc. (Hagerstown)
Massachusetts
- Discovery Museum (Acton)
Michigan
- Kingman Museum (Battle Creek)
- Michigan Science Center (Detroit)
Minnesota
- The Works Museum (Bloomington)
Mississippi
- Mississippi Children’s Museum (Jackson)
Missouri
- Bootheel Youth Museum (Malden)
Montana
- ExplorationWorks (Helena)
Nevada
New Hampshire
- SEE Science Center (Manchester)
New Mexico
- Museum of Nature & Science (Las Cruces)
- New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (Albuquerque)
New York
- Brookhaven National Laboratory Science Learning Center (Upton)
- Long Island Explorium (Port Jefferson)
- Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology (Syracuse)
- Sciencenter (Ithaca)
- Sci-Tech Center of Northern New York (Watertown)
- The Children’s Museum of Science & Technology (Troy)
North Carolina
- Imagination Station Science and History Museum (Wilson)
- Kaleideum North (Winston-Salem)
- Marbles Kids Museum (Raleigh)
- Schiele Museum of Natural History (Gastonia)
North Dakota
- Gateway to Science (Bismarck)
Ohio
- Center of Science and Industry (COSI) (Columbus)
- Cincinnati Museum Center (Cincinnati)
- Science Playspace Initiative SPI (Mount Vernon)
Oklahoma
- Science Museum Oklahoma (Oklahoma City)
Oregon
- Eugene Science Center (Eugene)
- ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum (Ashland)
Pennsylvania
- Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania (State College)
- Reading Public Museum (Reading)
Puerto Rico
- EcoExploratorio (Guaynabo)
Tennessee
- Discovery Center at Murfree Spring (Murfreesboro)
Texas
- Corpus Christi Museum of Science & History (Corpus Christi)
- Discovery Science Place (Tyler)
- Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (Fort Worth)
- Science Spectrum (Lubbock)
- Thinkery (Austin)
Utah
- Hutchings Museum (Lehi)
Vermont
- ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain (Burlington)
Virginia
- Children’s Museum of Virginia (Portsmouth)
- Science Museum of Western Virginia (Roanoke)
- Virginia Discovery Museum (Charlottesville)
- Virginia Living Museum (Newport News)
- Virginia Museum of Natural History (Martinsville)
Washington
- KidsQuest Children’s Museum (Bellevue)
- The REACH Museum (Richland)
West Virginia
- SMART-Center (Wheeling)
Wisconsin
- Discovery World (Milwaukee)
Wyoming
Celebrate math wherever you are!
Join us online—all year round! While you’re waiting for the next National Math Festival, you can explore More Math! activities, with a curated collection of games, magic tricks, logic puzzles, videos, books, and more. We add new content each month, and there’s sure to be something for everyone to enjoy!
For more ways to get involved with the National Math Festival anywhere in the U.S., you can share your math pictures and stories on social media by tagging @natmathfestival on Twitter.