This fall, some of the most unexpected discoveries of Foo Foo Festival won’t be taking place inside a theater or gallery—they will be waiting right on Palafox Street.

From October 30 through November 9, Pensacola MESS Hall will present Science on the Street in downtown Pensacola. As part of this year’s grant-funded programming, the interactive experience will explore the physics and perception of sound through hands-on installations scattered along Palafox Street and between Main and Garden streets.

The idea is simple: Walk down the street, see something strange, stop, and try it out. Approximately seven installations will be positioned, with no ticket, schedule, or need to plan ahead. “You can be just walking down the street to go to another Foo Foo Festival event and stumble upon a surprise treat,” explains Megan Pratt, executive director of the Pensacola MESS Hall. “It’s a unique chance to engage with a Foo Foo Festival activity, and it will be available whenever you’re ready to be curious.”

And there will be plenty to be curious about. One installation, a pebble harp, will turn falling stones into music, using vibration and a collection of small metal elements to create sound. Another, inspired by an activity MESS Hall has used in the museum, will let visitors experience sound in a surprisingly different way: a simple metal object, string, and the vibrations traveling through your finger can transform an ordinary clank into something much richer when you place your fingers in your ears. “It’s a fun way to experience sound that’s surprising and engaging,” Pratt says.

There will also be ear gongs, palm pipes, and an experiment designed to let visitors actually see the movement of a sound wave on a plucked guitar string. “The goal is to take something we experience constantly—sound—and make its mechanics visible, tangible, and a little more surprising,” Pratt adds.

There will also be a staffed booth where visitors can try additional sound-based activities, including making their own noisemakers and exploring experiments that require a little more explanation, electricity, or facilitation.

For Pratt, that curiosity is the real takeaway. “Foo Foo Festival events offer a lot of music that’s great to listen to, but why is that music great?” she says. “We want to make people think about what makes that music happen.”

All of the experiences are science, but they won’t come across as lessons. And, as Pratt says, that’s intentional. “Many people don’t think of themselves as museum people,” she explains. “We want to show that you that anyone can enjoy science and there’s something for everybody.”

That’s what makes this year’s grant-funded Foo Foo Festival an integral part to Pensacola MESS Hall’s mission: inspiring curiosity, experimentation, and creative problem-solving through math, engineering, science, and as its name suggests, a little bit of everything else. “It’s great to be part of a community like Pensacola and be given an opportunity to inspire people’s curiosity,” Pratt says. “And it’s great showing that doesn’t have to happen inside a buiding.”