Emerald Coast Science Center in Okaloosa County, Florida

Photograph: Emerald Coast Science Center.jpg by Ecsciencecenter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Okaloosa County attraction

Emerald Coast Science Center

Okaloosa County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

A hands-on science museum in Fort Walton Beach with live animals and a hurricane simulator.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The Emerald Coast Science Center at 31 Memorial Parkway SW in Fort Walton Beach is a science museum built around exhibits visitors work themselves, including a hurricane simulator, robots and LEGO mosaics, with scheduled chemistry and live-animal demonstrations. It keeps reptiles, birds and mammals. It was founded in 1989 as the FOCUS Center and took its present name in 2001. It is a nonprofit, and its stated purpose is to inspire and grow a scientifically engaged community. Inside there is an animal room, a Makerspace, a kitchen-science area called KITS, a Florida Ecosystem exhibit room, and open floor space carrying hands-on exhibits, brain games and robotics. Outside there is a turtle habitat, a butterfly garden and a shuffleboard court. The scale is small next to a big-city science museum, and that is rather the point of it: a child can work every exhibit in the building in one afternoon instead of being marched past a hundred of them. Fort Walton Beach, Destin and Niceville all lie within a short drive, so it serves the whole of south Okaloosa County rather than one town

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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