Kayla LaCour

High-speed cameras, commonly known as slow motion cameras, imbue milliseconds with the weight they’re so rarely granted. A balloon pops, with the water inside it still holding its shape; a bullet shot underwater leaves an attenuated cone of air in its wake. Daniel Gruchy and Gavin Free, known on YouTube as The Slow Mo Guys, have captured these moments and more than 150 others in painstakingly slow detail.

At San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences, there's no shortage of natural wonders. You can visit a dome-encapsulated rainforest, observe the dizzying jellyfish in their tanks, or ponder a wave of sea lion skulls stuck to a wall. But those skulls are really just a taste of what the place has to offer. This is no static natural history museum—it's a place where living, breathing science happens. Well, sort of.

Shawna Peterson bends glass tubes for a living. She makes neon art, and has put glowing faces on a giant wall of recyclables for artist Erik Otto, bent two-inch circles for a wall sized circuit board for Dolby Labs, and created a sign that simply says "Wash Me" for a San Francisco laundromat. The shining remnants of her past and future projects can be seen scattered throughout her workspace.