Extavium, Science museum for children in Potsdam, Germany.
Extavium is a science museum in Potsdam designed for children and young people, offering more than 80 hands-on experiments. The stations are arranged throughout different rooms where visitors can explore natural phenomena and scientific principles directly.
Seven Potsdam parents founded the association Exploratorium Potsdam in June 2004 and began building the first exhibits that November. A first show with 50 exhibits and a chemistry lab ran at Potsdam Hauptbahnhof in 2005, drawing 12,000 visitors in five weeks. A permanent hall on Wetzlarer Straße in Babelsberg opened in September 2006; the name Extavium was adopted on 1 June 2011, and since April 2024 the institution is called NANO Science Center.
The place grew from a grassroots idea to help children see how science connects to their everyday lives. School groups and families come here to explore and ask questions together.
The center is at Am Kanal 57 in Potsdam's city center, where it moved in August 2015. Two experiment laboratories host courses at different learning levels, from kindergarten children to secondary school pupils. Trained tutors are on hand at the exhibits, which may be touched and tried out. A new building is planned in the Babelsberg media city.
The name Extavium, used from 2011 to 2024, was built from the first syllable of Exploratorium and tavi, the initials of the Latin words terra, aqua, ventus and ignis — earth, water, wind and fire. The fifth element, the quintessence, was meant to be the visit itself. Since April 2024 the house is called NANO Science Center.
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