The Tech Interactive (Tech Museum San Jose)

A day at the Tech Museum is a great time for the whole family. The target age looks to be elementary school children, but there is a bit of fun for everyone. The interactive exhibits give kids a chance to be an engineer, scientist or city planner. It was our second time going, and we will definitely go again someday.

Highlights

• DNA sequence matching game to learn about some prehistoric humans. Maybe next time we can clone some ala Jurassic Park!
• IMAX theater with a dome shaped movie screen. Complete with popcorn and snacks, this is always a nice treat. We saw a short movie about sea lions which had a segment on a Sausalito marine sanctuary.
• Petri dishes, pipettes and some bacteria cultures in a fun lab experiment.
• City planning sim that felt reminiscent of early SimCity where you can allocate types of transport, industry and energy sources. Wasn’t SimCity ahead of it’s time? I mean, exploring relationships of pollution, green energy, crime and public transportation in a game back in the late 80s?

Other notes:

• Tickets seem limited so buy them online. The plus side of this was few visitors, and never a line to try out stuff. We had no problem getting tickets the morning of on a weekend.
• Not a lot open for lunch options in downtown San Jose. This area always seems dead on weekends, but you might consider San Pedro Square Market