High above the UC Berkeley campus at 1 Centennial Drive, the Lawrence Hall of Science has spent more than half a century giving Bay Area kids their first rocket launch, their first tarantula and, for many, their first look at a planetarium dome. It opened in 1968 in honor of physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and the University of California's first Nobel laureate.

What's inside

  • Planetarium: The center describes it as a full-dome projection theater. Its Holt Planetarium, built in 1973, became known for interactive, audience-participation shows. In 2000 it was named "The Best Planetarium in the Whole World" by The Planetarian, the International Planetarium Society's journal.
  • 3D Theater: seasonal films about ocean life and animal conservation.
  • Animal Discovery Zone: live animals, open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The center's own pitch includes meeting a chinchilla.
  • Outdoors on the plaza: Pheena, a life-size model of a juvenile fin whale; a giant DNA sculpture kids climb on; and Sunstones, an 18-foot granite sculpture from 1979 whose sightlines track the sunset at the solstices.
  • Young Explorers Area for kindergartners and younger.

The Nobel medal story

The Lawrence family gave the museum Lawrence's 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003. On March 1, 2007, staff found the 23-karat gold medal missing from its locked case. UC police investigated, the medal was recovered, and a student was arrested on suspicion of grand theft. A replica is now on display in the E.O. Lawrence Memorial room, next to a pair of "Dee" electrodes from one of the first cyclotrons.

Movie fans may recognize the building: the 1970 sci-fi thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, filmed in 1969, used it as the supercomputer's command center.

This weekend

The Lawrence is hosting bilingual English-Spanish Día de los Muertos workshops, with a community ofrenda, on Saturday, Oct. 31, from 1 to 3 p.m. On Sunday, Nov. 1, it will have a presence at the Oakland Día de los Muertos Festival from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Know before you go

The center is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Its 'ammatka Cafe is temporarily closed, so bring snacks or buy food at the Discovery Store. The view of the bay from the plaza is worth the trip on its own on a clear day.